Gradualist Fool
15th October 2006, 01:31
An essay, written by me.
Why I Don't Believe In Property
The most common definition for the origin of property right is Locke's theory, which is what this essay primarily addresses, is that labor, when mixed with nature, creates a right to ownership. If it did not, ownership would be impossible and the taking of one's labor equates with slavery, which is axiomatically rejected on the grounds that slavery is inherently obviously and intuitively wrong.
Now, this is a very poor argument. To begin, one cannot equate taking the product of another's labor with slavery because slavery is defined, not simply by the ownership of the product of another's labor, but far more. Slavery additionally involves the ownership of the person. Now, some could argue that taxation implies ownership of the person, but this is not the case. Under slavery, a person cannot choose to not work, what they will work at, or when. So, even though taxation takes the product of another's labor, though freedom is restricted, self-ownership remains intact.
But most importantly, the greatest distinction is that the condition of slavery is established for the sole reason of exploitation, whereas taxation is sometimes established for benevolent purposes. Slavery is defined, most of all, by its brutality. When Charles Darwin saw Catholic slavers in the Caribbean, it led him to question his faith eventually to the point of Atheism, but one can scarcely see how any religious person could lose sleep at night over a moderately progressive tax. Jesus Christ certainly didn't think so.
And it is slavery's brutality and exploitation which make it intuitively objectionable to begin with. If the taking of the product of another's labor is done in a way which is not brutal or exploitative, then it cannot be equated with slavery. To give you an analogy: Assault is the circumstance where one person physically harms another. Yet a parent spanking their child involves physical harm. Torture involves causing physical or psychological harm to another person. But tickling, itself, is annoying and, in extreme measures, psychologically harmful. Imagine being strapped to a chair and tickled for hours, against your will. But both assault and torture are defined, not just by their literal acts of creating physical or physical and\or psychological harm, but by their brutality and the specific contexts in which the acts are performed. Hence, even in terms of taxation, situational ethics apply.
Furthermore, even if one equates slavery and taxation, one must argue that taxation is slavery to a lesser degree. It's perfectly reasonable to equate taxation with slavery if the tax-rate is 100%, but what about 10%? The belief requires the bizarre notion of "fractions" of slavery. But the concept of slavery is not divisible. How could a person "divide," slavery and its morality? Not to mention that if the taxation is put forth for the good of the individual themselves or if they had no ownership over what's being taxed to begin with, then it is far from slavery.
So, "labor creates property," is an axiom, not a fully established argument.
Now, for some, "labor creates property," as an axiom is sufficient warrant. They may say, "How else could I survive without property? And what other rational way is there to define property?" or jokingly demand everything you own. But they fail to recognize that survival and prosperity comes, not from the implicit ownership of objects, but the continuing use of those objects. Ownership has just been seen as the traditional means of guaranteeing continual use. Ownership has only been justified as supporting freedom and individual prosperity because it allows for continuing use, not because perpetual control, particularly through inheritance, is somehow inherently necessary for life and liberty.
Therefore, it is in everyone's rational self-interest to have the right to use whatever objects they need, not necessarily with implicit ownership. One can call this "collective ownership," but it's sort of deceiving because ownership implies a relationship between people. John "owning" a piece of land means that nobody else but him can use it. If there is no justification for individual property, then anyone may use what they wish in a manner in which is fair to all, according to ethics which encompass all things, including property theory. The term "collective ownership," also implies either state ownership or, more commonly, ownership by ownership by a democratic majority. Neither holds true. In the absence of individual property, anyone may use what they wish, but none holds greater authority than anyone else, none may exert authority over others and all must come to agreements that are equally and objectively fair.
In order for anyone to survive and prosper, they do not need a monopoly over any natural resources, but merely the right to use what they want and need. Locke argues that, in a State of Nature, no one would ever possess more than they use because waste and greed isn't in their interest, as money does not yet exist. In the absence of a store of value, nothing owned can be wasted. And exploitation does not occur, because natural resources are bountiful, so that taking from nature does not take away from others.
If we begin with a State of Nature, as Locke does in "Two Treatises of Government" and as Robert Nozick does in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia", then it does not matter whether future people are exploited because the initial agreements were fair. But the "State of Nature," never actually existed in the way described, and even if it's useful in philosophical rhetoric, that alone does not justify it as an assumption.
The creation of money, too, allows for people to amass wealth to the point of waste and any definition of property must be relevant to today, the actual state of events, not some philosopher's dream. Even if, in the mythical State of Nature, the agreement was fair and no one was exploited, property is unjust if people today have possessions not based upon labor while others who do labor are exploited because they have little to nothing in order to bargain with.
And today, such as in Africa, the Earth is not so bountiful. The economy is not a zero-sum game, but it is a sum game. The "sum," is variable, but always fixed at any given point. There is not a finite amount of resources, because new resources can be generated. But there is, for instance, a finite amount of land, food, and gold. The control of these resources does take away from others, as the capability to gain property at all is dependent upon previous ownership of something to barter with. The only ones who "generate resources," in modern economies are the wealthy, whereas everyone else depends upon involuntary labor ("wage-slavery") to those who do have abundant amounts of capital.
Furthermore, even if we assume that labor is that which creates property, one leads to the logical conclusion that natural resources cannot be owned, as Henry George pointed out. Because the natural resources, themselves, were never labored for, but simply "gifts of nature," or, for the religious, gifts from God. Even Locke himself acknowledged this in the very beginning of his essay on property, in Book II, Chapter V of Two Treatises:
Whether we consider natural reason, which tells us, that men, being once born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence: or revelation, which gives us an account of those grants God made of the world to Adam, and to Noah, and his sons, it is very clear, that God, as king David says, Psal. cxv. 16. has given the earth to the children of men; given it to mankind in common.
And this was expressed in his statement regarding well-water:
Though the water running in the fountain be every one's, yet who can doubt, but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labour hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath thereby appropriated it to himself.
Now, if natural resources themselves cannot be owned, manufactured goods cannot be owned either.
Milton Friedman made this same argument and I agree with him that Georgism is contradictory. But rather than seeing the contradiction as a flaw in property theory itself, Friedman makes a circular argument: that it must imply Georgism is false and traditional property rights hold true. He begins by assuming that property right must exist and therefore the Georgist contradiction implies property rights exist, rather than recognizing that a clear gap between "ownership justified by labor" and "manufactured goods," implies that property right is unjustifiable.
Here is his exact argument from "Man, Economy, and State":
Some critics, especially the Henry Georgists, assert that, while a man or his assigns may be entitled to the produce of his own labor or anything exchanged for it, he is not entitled to an original, nature-given factor, a “gift of nature.” For one man to ap*propriate this gift is alleged to be an invasion of a common her*itage that all men deserve to use equally. This is a self-contradictory position, however. A man cannot produce anything without the cooperation of original nature-given factors, if only as standing room. In order to produce and possess any capital good or consumers’ good, therefore, he must appropriate and use an original nature-given factor. He cannot form products purely out of his labor alone; he must mix his labor with original nature-given factors. Therefore, if property in land or other nature-given factors is to be denied man, he cannot obtain property in the fruits of his labor.
A similar argument, though non-fallacious, could be made regarding positive liberty: In order for liberty to exist, one must have the means to express it. Therefore, base subsistence for all, too, is a prerequisite for liberty, just as ownership of natural resources is a prerequisite for ownership of property.
Freedom is, as George McCallum has pointed out, a triadic relationship: X is an agent, Y is an obstacle, and Z is an action or state, where X is free to go from Y to do or become Z. Libertarians focus solely upon the absence of public obstacles, while ignoring private obstacles and the existing state of each agent. To reiterate a previously relevant point: A person without property cannot own property. Abandoned children, orphans, widows, and the disabled all cannot provide for themselves through labor, because of the absence of property. And so, unsurprisingly, even before FDR's New Deal, before the rise of Keynesianism, Socialism, and modern Liberalism, these groups of people were provided for by the government.
In addition, labor mixed with property creates an ambiguous "radius of ownership," which cannot be clarified. Let's say, for instance, that a person builds a house. Do they own simply the land the house was built on? Historically, it has implied that the person owns the land the house is built on and a fair amount of land surrounding it. Also, because of the only recent invention of flight, the radius of ownership has only applied across the surface of the Earth and downward, which is rather strange.
Now, let's say that this same person decides to take gold from a local gold mine. Do they own the single piece of gold they grabbed or do they own the entire mine? What about the land between the mine and their house? Again, historically, it has implied that the person owns their house, the land surrounding it, the entire mine, and the land between the mine and their home.
The reason for this is rather clear and also an additional problem for property: externalities. Ecosystems, that is, the composition of natural resources, are not bubbles where you can say, "This piece of land can be used for such and such," as John Locke simply described a person gaining ownership of an apple tree by plucking a single apple. But on the contrary, the apple tree exists because of nearby apple trees which have established a population of them. The forest exists because of underground waterways which can extend for miles. The underground waterways exist because of rain which is carried from nearby rivers, lakes, streams, and even the ocean. And the apple tree also exists because of complex mutually-dependent, symbiotic relationships, a web of life which blankets the entire Earth. And so, ownership of just a single piece of nature implies authority over the whole of nature, to some degree. Thus, if you dump toxic waste or oil on your own "property," you aren't merely affecting your own property, but all of the property surrounding it. The same also applies if you pump toxic gases into the air, over-hunt the animal population, overfish sources of water, or otherwise tamper with the environment.
And so, the "no harm principle," in conjunction with property ownership is insufficient and the Libertarian concept of negative liberty involving "zones of freedom," is incoherent. Where, exactly, does one draw the borders of these "zones of freedom"? Theoretically, the first human on Earth to labor could have asserted ownership over the entire universe.
Locke's assertion that objects of nature are inherently "useless," in the absence of nature is also dead wrong, as natural objects have value in and of themselves, and such was demonstrated during the Gold Rush. They do have an equal value to every human being, but it is merely that each person is not yet capable of using said resources. And so such labor involves, not being the first person to find the apples on the tree to be worth eating, but the first person to get there.
And finally, even if we make the broad assumption the traditional Lockean property rights are justified, they are impossible to implement without benefitting thieves. As a simple concept, theft is accepted to always be unjustified. Even if I steal your car, if I sell it and give the profit to my descendants, if that theft is discovered, then my descendants must pay reparations. There is no "expiration date," for when stolen property becomes legitimate. Not even at the end of a person's life does stolen property become rightful inheritance.
Some may expect me to argue property is theft solely based upon the anecdotal cases of the Native Americans, European and Arab slave trade, and the Aboriginals. I do not and reject racially-based reparations for various reasons.
But rather, upholding property is upholding theft for the other obscure cases of theft throughout the world. In mankind's early history, no, for virtually all of mankind's history leading up to the past 150 years (arguably, if even that), mankind has inherently been a thief. Government itself steals, not because the institution of government is inherently evil, but because it is a powerful institution of authority run by men. As Lord Acton remarked, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It is not the institution, but human nature combined with power which has created such tyranny.
And aside from modern governments stealing from various groups, ancient tribes warred with one another, with no justification other than theft. The greatest amount of theft happened on a small scale; one man taking another man's wallet on the street. From the standpoint of our true State of Nature, it is conceivable that even the first human beings on Earth to divide themselves into separate clans very quickly stole from one another.
Locke's argument is that slavery is only justified for those who break natural law. So, of course, aggressors in an unjust war have no right to take from others. And thus, in a very roundabout way, he argues that slavery and theft of property is essentially unjustifiable, even in war in a State of Nature.
But there have been so many cases of theft and unjustified war, historically. This is certain, but the details are unknown. What is known is that, because the theft has been so abundant over such a long period of time, virtually all property right today relies upon theft in one manner or another. Just think: one man, thousands of years ago, stealing merely a loaf of bread from another man would impact trillions of dollars of assets, impacting billions of people today. And yet, in the absence of a time-machine, what we do today is uphold property right while knowing that, in some way, we are benefitting thieves and exploiting those whose forefathers had their property stolen.
Even assuming laissez-faire capitalism ensures high social mobility, that everyone can reach their whatever financial state they wish through their own labor, it is wrong to say that this theft should be justifiable solely because of our ignorance of it, its abundance, and its old age. Those whose property were stolen shouldn't have to work from the bottom up, because even if they can make it, they shouldn't have to and their rightful inheritance should be returned. In arguing that taxation, in any form, is theft, one must therefore support the greatest source of theft there is: historical theft. The same precautionary principle which implies "innocent until proven guilty," equally implies "non-ownership until proven justifiably owned."
And so, I conclude that property is unjustified, that while "use," is fully justified, it is the perpetual monopoly and eternal control that is entirely mythical. I do not argue that the government has any right to determine who can use what or that the abolishment of existing definitions of property would be economically feasible, but solely that they are unjustifiable on purely ethical and philosophical grounds.
In this manner, I advocate a "gift-economy," as the only ethically justifiable system, where anyone can use what they want. Whatever they use is theirs. This guarantees more freedom than in Authoritarian Socialism, where a group of elite politicians exercise limitless over all objects of value, but also more freedom than in Capitalism, whereby another group of elites exercise unchecked authority over all objects of value, solely on the basis of inheritance, investment, and incoherent philosophical principles.
Why I Don't Believe In Property
The most common definition for the origin of property right is Locke's theory, which is what this essay primarily addresses, is that labor, when mixed with nature, creates a right to ownership. If it did not, ownership would be impossible and the taking of one's labor equates with slavery, which is axiomatically rejected on the grounds that slavery is inherently obviously and intuitively wrong.
Now, this is a very poor argument. To begin, one cannot equate taking the product of another's labor with slavery because slavery is defined, not simply by the ownership of the product of another's labor, but far more. Slavery additionally involves the ownership of the person. Now, some could argue that taxation implies ownership of the person, but this is not the case. Under slavery, a person cannot choose to not work, what they will work at, or when. So, even though taxation takes the product of another's labor, though freedom is restricted, self-ownership remains intact.
But most importantly, the greatest distinction is that the condition of slavery is established for the sole reason of exploitation, whereas taxation is sometimes established for benevolent purposes. Slavery is defined, most of all, by its brutality. When Charles Darwin saw Catholic slavers in the Caribbean, it led him to question his faith eventually to the point of Atheism, but one can scarcely see how any religious person could lose sleep at night over a moderately progressive tax. Jesus Christ certainly didn't think so.
And it is slavery's brutality and exploitation which make it intuitively objectionable to begin with. If the taking of the product of another's labor is done in a way which is not brutal or exploitative, then it cannot be equated with slavery. To give you an analogy: Assault is the circumstance where one person physically harms another. Yet a parent spanking their child involves physical harm. Torture involves causing physical or psychological harm to another person. But tickling, itself, is annoying and, in extreme measures, psychologically harmful. Imagine being strapped to a chair and tickled for hours, against your will. But both assault and torture are defined, not just by their literal acts of creating physical or physical and\or psychological harm, but by their brutality and the specific contexts in which the acts are performed. Hence, even in terms of taxation, situational ethics apply.
Furthermore, even if one equates slavery and taxation, one must argue that taxation is slavery to a lesser degree. It's perfectly reasonable to equate taxation with slavery if the tax-rate is 100%, but what about 10%? The belief requires the bizarre notion of "fractions" of slavery. But the concept of slavery is not divisible. How could a person "divide," slavery and its morality? Not to mention that if the taxation is put forth for the good of the individual themselves or if they had no ownership over what's being taxed to begin with, then it is far from slavery.
So, "labor creates property," is an axiom, not a fully established argument.
Now, for some, "labor creates property," as an axiom is sufficient warrant. They may say, "How else could I survive without property? And what other rational way is there to define property?" or jokingly demand everything you own. But they fail to recognize that survival and prosperity comes, not from the implicit ownership of objects, but the continuing use of those objects. Ownership has just been seen as the traditional means of guaranteeing continual use. Ownership has only been justified as supporting freedom and individual prosperity because it allows for continuing use, not because perpetual control, particularly through inheritance, is somehow inherently necessary for life and liberty.
Therefore, it is in everyone's rational self-interest to have the right to use whatever objects they need, not necessarily with implicit ownership. One can call this "collective ownership," but it's sort of deceiving because ownership implies a relationship between people. John "owning" a piece of land means that nobody else but him can use it. If there is no justification for individual property, then anyone may use what they wish in a manner in which is fair to all, according to ethics which encompass all things, including property theory. The term "collective ownership," also implies either state ownership or, more commonly, ownership by ownership by a democratic majority. Neither holds true. In the absence of individual property, anyone may use what they wish, but none holds greater authority than anyone else, none may exert authority over others and all must come to agreements that are equally and objectively fair.
In order for anyone to survive and prosper, they do not need a monopoly over any natural resources, but merely the right to use what they want and need. Locke argues that, in a State of Nature, no one would ever possess more than they use because waste and greed isn't in their interest, as money does not yet exist. In the absence of a store of value, nothing owned can be wasted. And exploitation does not occur, because natural resources are bountiful, so that taking from nature does not take away from others.
If we begin with a State of Nature, as Locke does in "Two Treatises of Government" and as Robert Nozick does in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia", then it does not matter whether future people are exploited because the initial agreements were fair. But the "State of Nature," never actually existed in the way described, and even if it's useful in philosophical rhetoric, that alone does not justify it as an assumption.
The creation of money, too, allows for people to amass wealth to the point of waste and any definition of property must be relevant to today, the actual state of events, not some philosopher's dream. Even if, in the mythical State of Nature, the agreement was fair and no one was exploited, property is unjust if people today have possessions not based upon labor while others who do labor are exploited because they have little to nothing in order to bargain with.
And today, such as in Africa, the Earth is not so bountiful. The economy is not a zero-sum game, but it is a sum game. The "sum," is variable, but always fixed at any given point. There is not a finite amount of resources, because new resources can be generated. But there is, for instance, a finite amount of land, food, and gold. The control of these resources does take away from others, as the capability to gain property at all is dependent upon previous ownership of something to barter with. The only ones who "generate resources," in modern economies are the wealthy, whereas everyone else depends upon involuntary labor ("wage-slavery") to those who do have abundant amounts of capital.
Furthermore, even if we assume that labor is that which creates property, one leads to the logical conclusion that natural resources cannot be owned, as Henry George pointed out. Because the natural resources, themselves, were never labored for, but simply "gifts of nature," or, for the religious, gifts from God. Even Locke himself acknowledged this in the very beginning of his essay on property, in Book II, Chapter V of Two Treatises:
Whether we consider natural reason, which tells us, that men, being once born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence: or revelation, which gives us an account of those grants God made of the world to Adam, and to Noah, and his sons, it is very clear, that God, as king David says, Psal. cxv. 16. has given the earth to the children of men; given it to mankind in common.
And this was expressed in his statement regarding well-water:
Though the water running in the fountain be every one's, yet who can doubt, but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labour hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath thereby appropriated it to himself.
Now, if natural resources themselves cannot be owned, manufactured goods cannot be owned either.
Milton Friedman made this same argument and I agree with him that Georgism is contradictory. But rather than seeing the contradiction as a flaw in property theory itself, Friedman makes a circular argument: that it must imply Georgism is false and traditional property rights hold true. He begins by assuming that property right must exist and therefore the Georgist contradiction implies property rights exist, rather than recognizing that a clear gap between "ownership justified by labor" and "manufactured goods," implies that property right is unjustifiable.
Here is his exact argument from "Man, Economy, and State":
Some critics, especially the Henry Georgists, assert that, while a man or his assigns may be entitled to the produce of his own labor or anything exchanged for it, he is not entitled to an original, nature-given factor, a “gift of nature.” For one man to ap*propriate this gift is alleged to be an invasion of a common her*itage that all men deserve to use equally. This is a self-contradictory position, however. A man cannot produce anything without the cooperation of original nature-given factors, if only as standing room. In order to produce and possess any capital good or consumers’ good, therefore, he must appropriate and use an original nature-given factor. He cannot form products purely out of his labor alone; he must mix his labor with original nature-given factors. Therefore, if property in land or other nature-given factors is to be denied man, he cannot obtain property in the fruits of his labor.
A similar argument, though non-fallacious, could be made regarding positive liberty: In order for liberty to exist, one must have the means to express it. Therefore, base subsistence for all, too, is a prerequisite for liberty, just as ownership of natural resources is a prerequisite for ownership of property.
Freedom is, as George McCallum has pointed out, a triadic relationship: X is an agent, Y is an obstacle, and Z is an action or state, where X is free to go from Y to do or become Z. Libertarians focus solely upon the absence of public obstacles, while ignoring private obstacles and the existing state of each agent. To reiterate a previously relevant point: A person without property cannot own property. Abandoned children, orphans, widows, and the disabled all cannot provide for themselves through labor, because of the absence of property. And so, unsurprisingly, even before FDR's New Deal, before the rise of Keynesianism, Socialism, and modern Liberalism, these groups of people were provided for by the government.
In addition, labor mixed with property creates an ambiguous "radius of ownership," which cannot be clarified. Let's say, for instance, that a person builds a house. Do they own simply the land the house was built on? Historically, it has implied that the person owns the land the house is built on and a fair amount of land surrounding it. Also, because of the only recent invention of flight, the radius of ownership has only applied across the surface of the Earth and downward, which is rather strange.
Now, let's say that this same person decides to take gold from a local gold mine. Do they own the single piece of gold they grabbed or do they own the entire mine? What about the land between the mine and their house? Again, historically, it has implied that the person owns their house, the land surrounding it, the entire mine, and the land between the mine and their home.
The reason for this is rather clear and also an additional problem for property: externalities. Ecosystems, that is, the composition of natural resources, are not bubbles where you can say, "This piece of land can be used for such and such," as John Locke simply described a person gaining ownership of an apple tree by plucking a single apple. But on the contrary, the apple tree exists because of nearby apple trees which have established a population of them. The forest exists because of underground waterways which can extend for miles. The underground waterways exist because of rain which is carried from nearby rivers, lakes, streams, and even the ocean. And the apple tree also exists because of complex mutually-dependent, symbiotic relationships, a web of life which blankets the entire Earth. And so, ownership of just a single piece of nature implies authority over the whole of nature, to some degree. Thus, if you dump toxic waste or oil on your own "property," you aren't merely affecting your own property, but all of the property surrounding it. The same also applies if you pump toxic gases into the air, over-hunt the animal population, overfish sources of water, or otherwise tamper with the environment.
And so, the "no harm principle," in conjunction with property ownership is insufficient and the Libertarian concept of negative liberty involving "zones of freedom," is incoherent. Where, exactly, does one draw the borders of these "zones of freedom"? Theoretically, the first human on Earth to labor could have asserted ownership over the entire universe.
Locke's assertion that objects of nature are inherently "useless," in the absence of nature is also dead wrong, as natural objects have value in and of themselves, and such was demonstrated during the Gold Rush. They do have an equal value to every human being, but it is merely that each person is not yet capable of using said resources. And so such labor involves, not being the first person to find the apples on the tree to be worth eating, but the first person to get there.
And finally, even if we make the broad assumption the traditional Lockean property rights are justified, they are impossible to implement without benefitting thieves. As a simple concept, theft is accepted to always be unjustified. Even if I steal your car, if I sell it and give the profit to my descendants, if that theft is discovered, then my descendants must pay reparations. There is no "expiration date," for when stolen property becomes legitimate. Not even at the end of a person's life does stolen property become rightful inheritance.
Some may expect me to argue property is theft solely based upon the anecdotal cases of the Native Americans, European and Arab slave trade, and the Aboriginals. I do not and reject racially-based reparations for various reasons.
But rather, upholding property is upholding theft for the other obscure cases of theft throughout the world. In mankind's early history, no, for virtually all of mankind's history leading up to the past 150 years (arguably, if even that), mankind has inherently been a thief. Government itself steals, not because the institution of government is inherently evil, but because it is a powerful institution of authority run by men. As Lord Acton remarked, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It is not the institution, but human nature combined with power which has created such tyranny.
And aside from modern governments stealing from various groups, ancient tribes warred with one another, with no justification other than theft. The greatest amount of theft happened on a small scale; one man taking another man's wallet on the street. From the standpoint of our true State of Nature, it is conceivable that even the first human beings on Earth to divide themselves into separate clans very quickly stole from one another.
Locke's argument is that slavery is only justified for those who break natural law. So, of course, aggressors in an unjust war have no right to take from others. And thus, in a very roundabout way, he argues that slavery and theft of property is essentially unjustifiable, even in war in a State of Nature.
But there have been so many cases of theft and unjustified war, historically. This is certain, but the details are unknown. What is known is that, because the theft has been so abundant over such a long period of time, virtually all property right today relies upon theft in one manner or another. Just think: one man, thousands of years ago, stealing merely a loaf of bread from another man would impact trillions of dollars of assets, impacting billions of people today. And yet, in the absence of a time-machine, what we do today is uphold property right while knowing that, in some way, we are benefitting thieves and exploiting those whose forefathers had their property stolen.
Even assuming laissez-faire capitalism ensures high social mobility, that everyone can reach their whatever financial state they wish through their own labor, it is wrong to say that this theft should be justifiable solely because of our ignorance of it, its abundance, and its old age. Those whose property were stolen shouldn't have to work from the bottom up, because even if they can make it, they shouldn't have to and their rightful inheritance should be returned. In arguing that taxation, in any form, is theft, one must therefore support the greatest source of theft there is: historical theft. The same precautionary principle which implies "innocent until proven guilty," equally implies "non-ownership until proven justifiably owned."
And so, I conclude that property is unjustified, that while "use," is fully justified, it is the perpetual monopoly and eternal control that is entirely mythical. I do not argue that the government has any right to determine who can use what or that the abolishment of existing definitions of property would be economically feasible, but solely that they are unjustifiable on purely ethical and philosophical grounds.
In this manner, I advocate a "gift-economy," as the only ethically justifiable system, where anyone can use what they want. Whatever they use is theirs. This guarantees more freedom than in Authoritarian Socialism, where a group of elite politicians exercise limitless over all objects of value, but also more freedom than in Capitalism, whereby another group of elites exercise unchecked authority over all objects of value, solely on the basis of inheritance, investment, and incoherent philosophical principles.