Private property

[dblack]

I'd like to discuss the core issue underlying the capitalism/socialism debate: the issue of property 'ownership'.

Up front, in the interest of full disclosure, I've always leaned strongly libertarian, strongly free-market. And while I have issues with a few of the fundamental rules framing corporate capitalism (limited liability, etc..), I see private control over resources and the 'means of production' as preferable to control by a compulsive state government.

That said, unlike many of my libertarian/free-market friends, I don't see the concept of some alternative to private property 'unthinkable'. We already handle many other aspects of our environment communally and it doesn't seem crazy to us. In fact, the alternative might seem worse; do we really want to treat the air we breath as an ownable property? We've agreed to hold significant swaths of real estate and resources (roads, parks, etc) as 'public' property and this seems to work ok. So, why not the 'means of production'?

I'd like to avoid the usual partisan vitriol here, and actual discuss the issue in good faith. Even if you are adamantly opposed to socialism, I'll ask that you work with the assumption that it might work.

The other thing I'd like to avoid, from both 'sides' of the argument, is the reliance on historical data. The problem with using historical examples is always the lack of complete information and the lack of any possible counterfactuals to understand the situation. Did socialism fail in the USSR because it was implemented by a totalitarian government, or did it become totalitarian as a logical progression of socialism? Are modern socialists states succeeding because of socialism, or in spite of it? We can't really know the answers to these kind of questions. In any case, the contexts of these other nations are all different than ours. I'd like to discuss how we might work without private property here, in the U.S., with our situation, and our values as a people.

 

[Wry Catcher]

I'd like to discuss the core issue underlying the capitalism/socialism debate: the issue of property 'ownership'.

Up front, in the interest of full disclosure, I've always leaned strongly libertarian, strongly free-market. And while I have issues with a few of the fundamental rules framing corporate capitalism (limited liability, etc..), I see private control over resources and the 'means of production' as preferable to control by a compulsive state government.

That said, unlike many of my libertarian/free-market friends, I don't see the concept of some alternative to private property 'unthinkable'. We already handle many other aspects of our environment communally and it doesn't seem crazy to us. In fact, the alternative might seem worse; do we really want to treat the air we breath as an ownable property? We've agreed to hold significant swaths of real estate and resources (roads, parks, etc) as 'public' property and this seems to work ok. So, why not the 'means of production'?

I'd like to avoid the usual partisan vitriol here, and actual discuss the issue in good faith. Even if you are adamantly opposed to socialism, I'll ask that you work with the assumption that it might work.

The other thing I'd like to avoid, from both 'sides' of the argument, is the reliance on historical data. The problem with using historical examples is always the lack of complete information and the lack of any possible counterfactuals to understand the situation. Did socialism fail in the USSR because it was implemented by a totalitarian government, or did it become totalitarian as a logical progression of socialism? Are modern socialists states succeeding because of socialism, or in spite of it? We can't really know the answers to these kind of questions. In any case, the contexts of these other nations are all different than ours. I'd like to discuss how we might work without private property here, in the U.S., with our situation, and our values as a people.

A very thoughtful post/thread; I'm not surprised no one has responded. The questions you asked suggest (at least to me) that capitalism and socialism are pure and in reality they are not. Markets exist in socialist countries too, sometimes underground (black markets) as some do here, and here markets are not free, there are always controls (controls, but not controlled).

Given human nature and our culture I cannot foresee how "we might work without private property".

Consider however:

QUOTE: "From the late fourteenth to the eighteenth century vast areas of land held in common by local communities and used by villagers on a shared basis were enclosed by landlords and turned into private property. Fences were erected and the courts were given the function of issuing title deeds. This was the first large-scale and systemic abolition of social security.

The tradition of the commons was as old as humanity itself, and was not done away with with an instant wave of the economic wand. All that is solid melts away over a very long period of time. The original forced enclosures were succeeded by "Parliamentary enclosure," when acts of Parliament formally reconstituted common resources as private property. Indeed, the history of enclosure in England from the late fourteenth to the late eighteenth century might be termed the "primitive privatization," the historical progenitor of the contemporary neoliberal project to privatize and deregulate everything.

Parliamentary enclosures transformed what had originated as a wave of coerced expulsions into a political process, the legally sanctioned removal of any obstacles to the ongoing and limitless accumulation of capitalist wealth.

This secular tendency of capital to universally privatize was temporarily offset toward the middle of the twentieth century by the emergence of the New Deal in the United States and Social Democracy in Europe. But even these meager provisions of non-market benefits proved to be too radical for capital. Born-again capitalism is now the order of the day, and social security is once again, as it was way back then, perceived as a principal obstacle to profitability. The struggle of large English landowners to privatize historically common land finds a contemporary counterpart in the campaign of big banks and Wall Street brokerage houses to put to private, profitable use resources currently earmarked for workers in need. Just as the social costs of the transition to capitalism were borne by the working population, so will the attempted transition back to pre-Keynesian capitalism be borne by the same class."

Alan Nasser is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

LINK: Theft of the Commons - A Tradition | Thom Hartmann - News & info from the #1 progressive radio show

 

[Nemo]

Property rights, as with all rights, exist only by law; which is to say that they are not unlimited, much less absolute. That's the way it is; that's the way of the world. Get used to it.

 

[Toronado3800]

I'd like to discuss the core issue underlying the capitalism/socialism debate: the issue of property 'ownership'.

Up front, in the interest of full disclosure, I've always leaned strongly libertarian, strongly free-market. And while I have issues with a few of the fundamental rules framing corporate capitalism (limited liability, etc..), I see private control over resources and the 'means of production' as preferable to control by a compulsive state government.

That said, unlike many of my libertarian/free-market friends, I don't see the concept of some alternative to private property 'unthinkable'. We already handle many other aspects of our environment communally and it doesn't seem crazy to us. In fact, the alternative might seem worse; do we really want to treat the air we breath as an ownable property? We've agreed to hold significant swaths of real estate and resources (roads, parks, etc) as 'public' property and this seems to work ok. So, why not the 'means of production'?

I'd like to avoid the usual partisan vitriol here, and actual discuss the issue in good faith. Even if you are adamantly opposed to socialism, I'll ask that you work with the assumption that it might work.

The other thing I'd like to avoid, from both 'sides' of the argument, is the reliance on historical data. The problem with using historical examples is always the lack of complete information and the lack of any possible counterfactuals to understand the situation. Did socialism fail in the USSR because it was implemented by a totalitarian government, or did it become totalitarian as a logical progression of socialism? Are modern socialists states succeeding because of socialism, or in spite of it? We can't really know the answers to these kind of questions. In any case, the contexts of these other nations are all different than ours. I'd like to discuss how we might work without private property here, in the U.S., with our situation, and our values as a people.

I do not see a need to overhaul the current system. Just tweak it.

IMHO present human nature is best served with a level of private ownership which provides obvious rewards for success and obvious pitfalls for failures. It just keeps ppl working.

We need safeguards to keep private or public entities from.ruining "the public environment" and evem to some extent polluting their own private property. I am amazed at what ppl will do for a buck!

The level of rewards and failures need to be....constrained....taimed.... No one can be allowed to build a private army or control the internet for example. Also we need to keep folks from starving and we SHOULD provide some glimmer of hope for a better future after things hit the fan for individuals. Folks with no glimmer of hope resort to crime, or have socialist or other revolutions.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Property rights will be a thing of the past if some people get their way.

In IA a town is attempting to require that all businesses and apartments with more than 3 units produce copies of all keys to the property for use by fire and police departments.

Opposition organizes to beat key box ordinance

Pretty soon your home or business won't be yours and forget about being "secure in your person, houses, papers and effects"

 

[expat_panama]

...We've agreed to hold significant swaths of real estate and resources (roads, parks, etc) as 'public' property and this seems to work ok. So, why not the 'means of production'?... ...I'd like to avoid, from both 'sides' of the argument, is the reliance on historical data....

We're proposing anyone who produces say, a new song, will find the state seizing the 'means of production' and his guitar becomes a public park. Off hand, I'd point out how that approach has been so disastrous in the past but the idea here is to ignore what's happened in the past.

Figures.

 

[uscitizen]

I'd like to discuss the core issue underlying the capitalism/socialism debate: the issue of property 'ownership'.

Up front, in the interest of full disclosure, I've always leaned strongly libertarian, strongly free-market. And while I have issues with a few of the fundamental rules framing corporate capitalism (limited liability, etc..), I see private control over resources and the 'means of production' as preferable to control by a compulsive state government.

That said, unlike many of my libertarian/free-market friends, I don't see the concept of some alternative to private property 'unthinkable'. We already handle many other aspects of our environment communally and it doesn't seem crazy to us. In fact, the alternative might seem worse; do we really want to treat the air we breath as an ownable property? We've agreed to hold significant swaths of real estate and resources (roads, parks, etc) as 'public' property and this seems to work ok. So, why not the 'means of production'?

I'd like to avoid the usual partisan vitriol here, and actual discuss the issue in good faith. Even if you are adamantly opposed to socialism, I'll ask that you work with the assumption that it might work.

The other thing I'd like to avoid, from both 'sides' of the argument, is the reliance on historical data. The problem with using historical examples is always the lack of complete information and the lack of any possible counterfactuals to understand the situation. Did socialism fail in the USSR because it was implemented by a totalitarian government, or did it become totalitarian as a logical progression of socialism? Are modern socialists states succeeding because of socialism, or in spite of it? We can't really know the answers to these kind of questions. In any case, the contexts of these other nations are all different than ours. I'd like to discuss how we might work without private property here, in the U.S., with our situation, and our values as a people.

I do not see a need to overhaul the current system. Just tweak it.

IMHO present human nature is best served with a level of private ownership which provides obvious rewards for success and obvious pitfalls for failures. It just keeps ppl working.

We need safeguards to keep private or public entities from.ruining "the public environment" and evem to some extent polluting their own private property. I am amazed at what ppl will do for a buck!

The level of rewards and failures need to be....constrained....taimed.... No one can be allowed to build a private army or control the internet for example. Also we need to keep folks from starving and we SHOULD provide some glimmer of hope for a better future after things hit the fan for individuals. Folks with no glimmer of hope resort to crime, or have socialist or other revolutions.

Yep I am sure all the private property advocates are against zoning regs which keep the pig farm or junk yard out of the lot next door?

Are waterways/streams private property?
In KY if navigable they are not, if not navigable the water is public but do not let your feet touch the bottom it is private

 

[Two Thumbs]

W/o private property you have no right to refuse entry to anyone.

You can't claim your home as yours, even if you paid for it.


The idea of no private property is utterly insane

 

[Wry Catcher]

Property rights will be a thing of the past if some people get their way.

In IA a town is attempting to require that all businesses and apartments with more than 3 units produce copies of all keys to the property for use by fire and police departments.

Opposition organizes to beat key box ordinance

Pretty soon your home or business won't be yours and forget about being "secure in your person, houses, papers and effects"

Paranoid much? Fact is, if some get their way everything will be privatized and a first responser will have more control over you than a key to your apt. He'll decide on the spot if you live or die - if your illness or injury is too expenisve to treat - bye bye.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Property rights will be a thing of the past if some people get their way.

In IA a town is attempting to require that all businesses and apartments with more than 3 units produce copies of all keys to the property for use by fire and police departments.

Opposition organizes to beat key box ordinance

Pretty soon your home or business won't be yours and forget about being "secure in your person, houses, papers and effects"

Paranoid much? Fact is, if some get their way everything will be privatized and a first responser will have more control over you than a key to your apt. He'll decide on the spot if you live or die - if your illness or injury is too expenisve to treat - bye bye.

Sorry but I ain't handing my key over to some fucking government hack.

You can if you want to.

 

[Two Thumbs]

Property rights will be a thing of the past if some people get their way.

In IA a town is attempting to require that all businesses and apartments with more than 3 units produce copies of all keys to the property for use by fire and police departments.

Opposition organizes to beat key box ordinance

Pretty soon your home or business won't be yours and forget about being "secure in your person, houses, papers and effects"

Paranoid much? Fact is, if some get their way everything will be privatized and a first responser will have more control over you than a key to your apt. He'll decide on the spot if you live or die - if your illness or injury is too expenisve to treat - bye bye.

That's the pot calling the kettle black

 

[Flagwavrusa]

I cannot see how you promote economic success by giving the people who contribute the least the same, or about the same, slice of the pie as the most talented and productive contributors.

I mean, no reasonable person is going to work their butt off if they are compensated at the same rate as the slackers. Nor will creative people spend time trying to invent the latest and greatest gizmo if the final product belongs to the collective and can't be sold for a profit.

I don't think you need to know its track record of failure to see that socialism is a prescription for economic failure.

 

[Wiseacre]

So what alternative concept to private property is there? Other than socialism? You either own your own stuff or you don't, where's the middle ground?

Do you mean to have some industries owned and controlled by the gov't? IMHO, there is absolutely nothing the gov't can run more effectively and efficiently than private enterprise.

Towards one end are you trying to limit the concept of private property? Are you trying to redistribute wealth, have singlepayer gov't run healthcare, what's the point?

 

[dblack]

QUOTE: "From the late fourteenth to the eighteenth century vast areas of land held in common by local communities and used by villagers on a shared basis were enclosed by landlords and turned into private property. Fences were erected and the courts were given the function of issuing title deeds. This was the first large-scale and systemic abolition of social security.
..."

I'm not sure where 'social security' fits in, or what it's supposed to mean in context, though obviously parsing up the commons into private property happened. But I don't see how we could go back to common wilderness as the default state of unoccupied land. Our population is such that we depend on the land being utilized efficiently.

In a capitalist economy, the function that property and profit provide is to answer the question of how we allocate resources. People with property decide how to put it to use. If they do so in a way that satisfies the needs and desires of consumers (demand) well, they are rewarded with profits (more property) to allocate. If they do so poorly, if they fail to meet the needs and desires of consumers, they lose property (losses) and someone else gets to try their hand at allocating it.

The question of who gets to decide how to allocate resources still needs to be answered in a system without private property. And that's what's never been quite clear to me about socialism. Presumably, if investors aren't deciding which projects go forward, and which are shelved, agents of the government are making these decisions. My hunch is that such decisions are far more likely to be made for spurious political reasons (rather than the needs of consumers) when the person making the call has no stake in the outcome.

We're proposing anyone who produces say, a new song, will find the state seizing the 'means of production' and his guitar becomes a public park. Off hand, I'd point out how that approach has been so disastrous in the past but the idea here is to ignore what's happened in the past.

W/o private property you have no right to refuse entry to anyone.

You can't claim your home as yours, even if you paid for it.

I tend to agree with these sentiments, but to be fair, I don't believe most socialists advocate seizing our personal effects and declaring them public property. i think most of them would even be ok basic home ownership. Like I said, where to draw the line seems problematic to me, but for the sake for argument, I'm willing to take them at their word and assume it's somewhere between your blue jeans and farmland or factories.

 

[Trajan]

how about money as 'property'?

 

[dblack]

how about money as 'property'?

That's a good question, and it's not entirely clear to me what the socialist line on money is. Though it seems they are opposed to anyone have 'too much' of it - whatever that might means in context.

 

[code1211]

I'd like to discuss the core issue underlying the capitalism/socialism debate: the issue of property 'ownership'.

Up front, in the interest of full disclosure, I've always leaned strongly libertarian, strongly free-market. And while I have issues with a few of the fundamental rules framing corporate capitalism (limited liability, etc..), I see private control over resources and the 'means of production' as preferable to control by a compulsive state government.

That said, unlike many of my libertarian/free-market friends, I don't see the concept of some alternative to private property 'unthinkable'. We already handle many other aspects of our environment communally and it doesn't seem crazy to us. In fact, the alternative might seem worse; do we really want to treat the air we breath as an ownable property? We've agreed to hold significant swaths of real estate and resources (roads, parks, etc) as 'public' property and this seems to work ok. So, why not the 'means of production'?

I'd like to avoid the usual partisan vitriol here, and actual discuss the issue in good faith. Even if you are adamantly opposed to socialism, I'll ask that you work with the assumption that it might work.

The other thing I'd like to avoid, from both 'sides' of the argument, is the reliance on historical data. The problem with using historical examples is always the lack of complete information and the lack of any possible counterfactuals to understand the situation. Did socialism fail in the USSR because it was implemented by a totalitarian government, or did it become totalitarian as a logical progression of socialism? Are modern socialists states succeeding because of socialism, or in spite of it? We can't really know the answers to these kind of questions. In any case, the contexts of these other nations are all different than ours. I'd like to discuss how we might work without private property here, in the U.S., with our situation, and our values as a people.

The fundamental flaw in Socialism is that it is not designed to work with people as the major component.

The Great Democracies of the West are not Socialist economies. They are Socialist governments. The economies that support the governments are Capitalist.

In a Socialist economy, the State owns everything and the population members receive what they needs in a method not connected to what they produce. It makes everyone, for lack of a better word, unified as equals. In this national Union, all of the union members are driven low enough to equal the lowest common denominator.

A great example of the public sector vs. the private sector is the toll road that traverses Northern Indiana. Under Government control, it was poorly maintained, failed to expand to meet the growing traffic patterns and was losing money by the barrel full.

It was sold to a private concern that has expanded the number of lanes, properly maintains the whole thing, makes a profit and pays taxes.

The profit motive is the only motive that drives anything concerned with money to be successful. Within any government program, the profit motive does not exist and, in fact, the motive to cost more money to produce the same or less is powerful. More people under your span of control equals greater prestige and income.

Less government in most areas is the key to greater expendable income for the masses.

Allow people to be successful and they will flow into the opportunities like water flowing to the ocean. Choke them with undue regulation, oppressive controls and unreasoning restraints and they will fall into an economic fetal position and hope it just ends sometime soon.

No need for any historicals here. Just look around.

 

[Trajan]

how about money as 'property'?

That's a good question, and it's not entirely clear to me what the socialist line on money is. Though it seems they are opposed to anyone have 'too much' of it - whatever that might means in context.

well, first off, when someone characterizes tax cuts as spending, you know you're in trouble.

 

[flacaltenn]

Don't think either of these two results have been mentioned.

One is that property held in any type of "commons" arrangement is usually not maintained or managed at the same level of care. Recent experiments in leasing fishing grounds to individuals has resulted in large improvement to fish stock and enviromental quality. And I'd rather deed land to the Nature Conservancy than the forest service. See HUD Section 8 housing for slightly different twist.
A corrolary to this is that management is centralized for common property thereby removing it from innovative uses and redirections which can make it more productive in distributed hands.. (for a backwards 1 and 1/2 with a twist -- see the KELO case under eminent domain)

The second goes to the fungibility of money/time/property. They are all interchangeable. A societal claim on private property is no different than a claim on time invested. What do we call it when someone places a claim on your time? Either incarceration, slavery, or childhood.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I'd like to discuss the core issue underlying the capitalism/socialism debate: the issue of property 'ownership'.

Up front, in the interest of full disclosure, I've always leaned strongly libertarian, strongly free-market. And while I have issues with a few of the fundamental rules framing corporate capitalism (limited liability, etc..), I see private control over resources and the 'means of production' as preferable to control by a compulsive state government.

That said, unlike many of my libertarian/free-market friends, I don't see the concept of some alternative to private property 'unthinkable'. We already handle many other aspects of our environment communally and it doesn't seem crazy to us. In fact, the alternative might seem worse; do we really want to treat the air we breath as an ownable property? We've agreed to hold significant swaths of real estate and resources (roads, parks, etc) as 'public' property and this seems to work ok. So, why not the 'means of production'?

I'd like to avoid the usual partisan vitriol here, and actual discuss the issue in good faith. Even if you are adamantly opposed to socialism, I'll ask that you work with the assumption that it might work.

The other thing I'd like to avoid, from both 'sides' of the argument, is the reliance on historical data. The problem with using historical examples is always the lack of complete information and the lack of any possible counterfactuals to understand the situation. Did socialism fail in the USSR because it was implemented by a totalitarian government, or did it become totalitarian as a logical progression of socialism? Are modern socialists states succeeding because of socialism, or in spite of it? We can't really know the answers to these kind of questions. In any case, the contexts of these other nations are all different than ours. I'd like to discuss how we might work without private property here, in the U.S., with our situation, and our values as a people.

I think you are missing something. In saying that you would be willing to accept that property rights might be negotiable is the fact that property is not just real estate. I could conceivably agree that real estate could be held by the community, but I would still object to the community community having access to private areas simply because they maintain the right to the real estate under that area. Most of the legal theory underlying our judicial system relies on the concept that our property belongs to us as individuals. That does not just include real estate, it includes our car, computer, clothes, pieces of paper, and even the ideas we have.

By the way, have you ever read any science fiction? If we ever move into space will the air still be free, or will people have to pay for the air they breathe? Just because our current system assumes that air is a free resource because no one has to work to supply it does not mean that it will always work that way.The EPA is going to classify CO2 as a pollutant. That could, conceivably, lead to us paying for the air we exhale.

As to the idea that socialism might work, I see no reason it would not, on a small scale. My problem with socialism doesn't lie with the communal ownership of property, it lies with the central planning. Central planning is cumbersome and slow to respond to changes if the system gets larger. Despite your request not top point at history to make a point, if you examine history this is the one thing that stands out. Socialism works on a small scale, but fails when the system grows to large.

I would also like to point out that the means of production is often owned by the community in our current system. We have a word for that in the United States, corporation. Like socialism, I see problems when corporations get too big. They become unwieldy and slow to respond to market forces.We saw that recently when the government argued that some corporations got too big to fail. Imagine if, instead of just bailing them out, they would have had to bail themselves out. How would that have worked out in the long run?