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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33055 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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But some of the other collateral rights do hold up in analogy: in this case, the 'right to exclude.'

This seems to still derive from there only being one physical piece of property, which allows only one sort of use or occupation at a time. I need to keep others off my land because their use impinges on mine. If someone could create a functionally-identical piece of land that they could occupy and use without impinging on me, up to and including contiguousness with the surrounding terrain, we'd be right back to the situation where there's no obvious harm to doing so.

I don't recognize a moral right to exclude other people from ownership and participation as such. I recognize a right to exclude because such a right is necessary to prevent obvious harms from squatting, but duplication obviates those harms and thus the necessity for such a principle. Artificial scarcity for its own sake seems innately perverse.

There's also value based on scarcity. If I own a piece of real property near Disneyland, the value of that property is not merely based on the utility of being-near-Disneyland, but also the reality that this proximity is rare--if you could create "a functionally-identical piece of land...including contiguousness with the surrounding terrain" then the value of my property would be markedly reduced, even though the baseline utility of being-near-Disneyland hasn't changed.

Like if the crusty old farmer next door suddenly decides to turn his back 40 into condos? I don't think you have the right to stop him in this instance.

Yes, but I would argue that no one has a right to the preservation of such value. If you own the property next to Disneyland, Disneyland doesn't need your permission to close down and move, and if you own the highway to Disneyland, you don't have a right to quash air travel.

Your right to that value is contingent, not innate. We grant that right because not granting it would have other, worse effects, not because granting it is good in itself. If we could deny that right without those other harmful effects, we'd be better off doing so even if the result is the loss of the value you held. Enforcing artificial scarcity may be a necessary evil in some rare cases, but it's still evil and very often not even necessary.

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