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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   27765 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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It has been a while since I've read John Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government, but I've been ruminating on his conception of property in that book. He says:

Though the earth, and all inferiour creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.

Basically, whenever you mix your labor with something out of nature, it becomes yours.

This conception was highly influential on the Founding Fathers of the United States, and it is easy to see the advantages of such a conception of private property for a brand new country. Sweeping aside the thorny issue of native Americans, if you have a vast wilderness of unclaimed territory, the idea of allowing citizens to go out, form a homestead somewhere and to recognize their claim on the land feels very intuitive and "fair."

Unfortunately, such an idealized conception of property ownership didn't actually exist in practice. Steven Stoll's Ramp Hollow explores some of the things that happened in Appalachia over the history of the United States. Just within this microcosm, we see the way things often played out in practice, and it was far from the Lockean ideal.

It was not unusual for some rich landowner to lay claim to a bunch of land he had never even seen or set foot upon, and then to just sit on the claim without ever doing anything with it. Then squatters would move in, and make homes and farms on the land, before being discovered and kicked out.

It seems to me, if we take John Locke's account of property as our model, the squatters had a better moral claim to owning that land than the de jure owners in many cases. And yet again and again, we see governments recognizing the claims of absentee landlords over those of the people who had worked and improved the lands with their own two hands.

In many ways, property and its justification are core to establishing that society is "fair." So it is troubling to note a discrepancy this big between theory and practice so early in the country's history, at the very foundation of property ownership claims, poisoning everything downstream from them.

I think a toy example will help illustrate why this is such a big deal for the modern United States:

Imagine there's an island that has 10 heterosexual couples on it. This island is abundant in natural resources, and it has the following features:

  • If 20 people work the land, it can produce a luxurious lifestyle for all 20 people.
  • If 14 people work the land, it can produce a good (but not great) lifestyle for all 20 people.
  • If four people work together, it is possible to trap two people in a 10 foot by 10 foot area of the island effectively forever.

Now, as we come into the island, 9 of the couples have come together and formed a gang. They claim that because their gang was the first to walk the circumference of the island, they have the best claim to owning the island and they will enforce their property claim against the 10th couple. They do not want the last couple collecting resources on the part of the island that had informally been "theirs" up until a few days ago, in which they had spent years building shelters and tools to improve their hunting and gathering.

The gang is going to imprison the couple in a 10'x10' part of the island unless they agree to recognize their ownership claim. Furthermore, while they're prepared to enjoy a merely good lifestyle for the rest of their lives, they tell the unfortunate couple that after they agree to the gang's ownership claim the gang would be willing to rent "their" part of the island back to them, as long as that couple gives them all a tribute that will take them down to a meager lifestyle, and take the gang up to a decadent lifestyle.

Left with no other choice, the unfortunate couple agrees to recognize the gang's ownership claim, and starts paying tribute.

Is the society on the island described above fair or just? I think most people's intuitions would be that it is not.

Now, imagine that several generations have passed. The islanders have expanded out onto several other islands, but the extra resources from the first island have resulted in a very uneven society. The descendants of the original gang own everything, and the descendants of the original unfortunate couple have never owned anything. They rent wherever they go, despite barely enjoying the fruits of their labor.

Did the passage of time, and inheritance of property down through the generations somehow make the society more fair and just? Would the descendants of the original unfortunate couple be wrong to want to overthrow their society and redistribute the land and other resources of society more fairly and justly?

As I see it, there are three distinct phases when it comes to thinking about property rights:

  1. The initial distribution of property at the establishment of a country.
  2. The inheritance of property up towards the present.
  3. The free exchange of property among people of the present generation.

It seems to me like a lot of people are happy to start at step 3 and call it a day when it comes to how they conceptualize property, and its just distribution through society. A worker who is forced to sell their labor in order to make money to purchase the necessities of life is not being exploited no matter how little they're getting paid, and no matter what happened in steps 1 and 2 to get them to the place where they needed to sell their labor in the first place.

For people who defend the current conception of property in the industrialized world, and who think that we should accept the idea of starting at step 3 and not worrying about 1 and 2, what is the justification?

For people who defend the current conception of property in the industrialized world

If your whole post is applicable anywhere, it is applicable to pre-industrial world, where the rich were rich because they inherited land from their ancestors who arrived with William the Bastard centuries ago.

It has no meaning in industrial civilization, and even less in post-industrial one. How many of today's rich are rich because of unbroken inheritance of land stolen from Indians or Saxons?

Even in country where some of old feudal customs, traditions and wealth still survive you can, at best, justify expropriation of property of Duke of Westminster while not touching the rest of billionaires.

There is a reason why equal distribution of land, most extremely extreme extremist rebel demand for millenia, was quietly dropped back in the 19th century.

Did the passage of time, and inheritance of property down through the generations somehow make the society more fair and just?

Yes, ideas of statute of limitations and adverse possession are universally considered fair and just, given that the alternative is state of eternal vendetta, eternal revenge for ancient slights that were revenge for even more ancient slights.

All a statute of limitations does, conceptually, is move step 1 up to some more recent date, though. If we say that any claims older than, say, 100 years will not be recognized, then the new "foundation" of the current system of property ownership is just 100 years in the past. I think a statute of limitations can certainly be a procedurally just rule for a society to adopt, but that doesn't mean the outcomes that it produces will be substantially just.

Also, it's awfully convenient for a group in power to say, "Hey, we've gotta let bygones be bygones, alright? You wouldn't want endless vendettas and re-litigation of this whole thing every generation, would you? Good, good, I'm glad you're seeing reason, now go back to your hovel and eat your gruel."

Joe Studwell's How Asia Works makes a case that land reform (AKA "stealing" land from some people and giving it to others) was an important part of the transition to being a middle income country for many Asian countries. And we even have examples of land reform under the Gracchi brothers in ancient Rome, so the issue of land concentrating into a few hands and leading to issues in society is a well-trodden one. To avoid the kind of stagnation that tends to result from that, why shouldn't we adopt something like Georgism, which would weaken land-based property ownership within society but attempt to make it fair going forward?

To avoid the kind of stagnation that tends to result from that, why shouldn't we adopt something like Georgism, which would weaken land-based property ownership within society but attempt to make it fair going forward?

The US economy is simply not stagnating. We have the highest nominal GDP/capita worldwide among large countries, lead novel research and industries (most recently AI), and our #1 competitor is notorious for stealing our IP. The US's property economy is stagnating for all the usual YIMBY reasons and a lot more construction should be legal, but that's not at all analogous to your OP. Georgism, taken literally, means replacing all taxes with a tax on land, which I don't think is workable because a lot of important capital is entirely intangible in the form of human capital, IP, and organizations and a land tax totally misses that.

Joe Studwell's How Asia Works makes a case that land reform (AKA "stealing" land from some people and giving it to others) was an important part of the transition to being a middle income country for many Asian countries. Exactly. These were pre-industrial feudal countries completely unlike modern developed world.

Exactly. These were extremely poor pre-industrial countries completely unlike modern developed world.

Assuming you are in US. You waved your magic wand, expropriated all 1,3 billion acres of privately owned agricultural land and distributed it equally. Every US citizen now owns whole 3.9 acre of land.

Now what? How is poverty alleviated? How are people who "live in hovel and eat gruel" helped, what are they supposed to do with this land?

And we even have examples of land reform under the Gracchi brothers in ancient Rome, so the issue of land concentrating into a few hands and leading to issues in society is a well-trodden one. To avoid the kind of stagnation that tends to result from that, why shouldn't we adopt something like Georgism, which would weaken land-based property ownership within society but attempt to make it fair going forward?

All pre-industrial, pre-modern ancient civilizations.

Demonstrate that the stagnation we see now (assuming we have stagnation) is due to poor people lacking land of average value about 4000 dollars per acre.

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