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What if our fundamentals are exactly backwards?
New to The Motte, looking for constructive, critical discussion.
Here's an example of what I mean by a "fundamental":
Every economic system that has seemed credible to most people since the dawn of civilization has revolved around the legal establishment and safeguarding of property through the concept of ownership.
But what is ownership? I have my own ideas, but I asked ChatGPT and was surprised that it pretty much hit the nail on the head: the definitional characteristic of ownership is the legal right to deprive others.
This has been such a consistently universal view that very few people question it. Even fewer have thought through a cogent alternative. Most people go slack-jawed at the suggestion that an alternative is possible.
Here's something from years back, before I'd zeroed in on the perverse nature of ownership:
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
/images/17459352527399495.webp
Aight, I'll bite. There isn't one. There's no form of collective ownership that doesn't involve the same definitional characteristic of denying someone some form of right over the property. Even the most enlightened form of communism will entail restricting some member of the community from doing some thing to the property. Even a nomadic society with the most minimal form of ownership imaginable will still provide exclusionary rights over personal property, and have rules about who gets preference in occupying any given site.
I think you're the first one I've read so far with an actually responsive comment.
Agreed. But that's the equivalent of saying, "There is no form of collective deprivation that isn't a form of deprivation." Who wouldn't agree?
The problem isn't that there's no form of deprivation that isn't a form of deprivation. The problem is that you're unaware of an alternative to deprivation -- even though you're intimately familiar with it.
We fail to see what's right in front of us thanks to compartmentalization. When you light on the alternative, you'll get it. Part of the problem here is that everyone has excluded the alternative from the "these are the only things that work" compartment, and for reasons that are still mysterious to me, they refuse to look outside it -- kinda like a statist who rejects anarchism not because they understand it, but because they decide without understanding that "it could never work".
Well, I didn't ask for an alternative "that works" or claim that there's an alternative that would work (even though there is and it does) did I? I just asked what an alternative might be. This is as hypothetical as it gets. The fact itself that people for the most part avoid engaging with hypotheticals is hugely telling. I mean, what risk is there? Why the reluctance and avoidance? Why throw up objections and attempts to dismiss? It's pretty wild, really.
I can think of plenty of alternatives. For example you could have an entirely status based society. Nobody has property, control over an object's disposition lies with the highest status person who currently is using it in some way. Falls apart pretty hard for consumeables and investment, since any arrangement of capital is fundamentally not durable.
You could also have a society where all property is truly communal. And we just execute anyone who tills over a flower bed to plant something new, or cocks up a chemical factory testing a new formulae. Execution is a little hyperbolic, but basically incredibly strong rules and manner based order that strongly discourages anyone from messing with anything under threat of ostracization or physical punishment.
These alternatives just kinda suck, which is why we have ownership. Because otherwise a small minority of people will do antisocial things.
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