I feel like we're pretty close to agreement here. So, we just have to fine tune some confusions. When I say 'private property' it is different than 'personal property". I realize I haven't been making this distinction enough. So, I hope to clear the air here (as your comments are interchanging them).
A recent conversation I was having about this with @collabovestor shared an example that is much more easily understandable than the previous attempts I have been making. What I would call personal property he is referring to "homesteading" (of course you can quickly google personal vs private property to learn more).
". When I refer to homesteading, I am talking about Rothbard's explanation in "The Ethics of Liberty" wherein a human can own land by homesteading it and utilizing it. For example, growing crops or mining for minerals, etc. Obviously there is a limit as to how much a person can physically homestead a property. According to this idea, it would be impractical for one wealthy person to homestead thousands of square kilometers as he cannot possibly maintain such a vast swath of land. That is why Queen Elizabeth has no moral claim on the vastly pristine lands of Canada. She is not working or utilizing that land at all, so how can she claim that it is Crown land?
A good example I like to use of homesteading in practice is the case of an outdoor concert. As the first to arrive I select an area of grass to sit on. It appears that I "own" the entire park. As others arrive, they naturally pick another spot on the grass, leaving me with less. This continues until the entire park is filled with people all claiming their own spot. I, as the first, cannot possibly argue that the entire grassy area is mine as my butt is not that big. It's interesting how humans can do this without some authority dictating where to sit and how much space to take up; it just happens naturally. Of course, this is just an example of the natural order of homesteading as neither I, nor the other concert goers, own the park, but I think you get the idea."
So this ties in with the ideas of property.
"I do not agree that the idea of property is somehow inherently violent. To the contrary, it is those that violate a person's legitimate property that commit violence against that person. When someone tries to take away something that rightfully belongs to you,"
What is legitimate? Is the example above legitimate use of that space, I say yes. But under capitalism, someone could go to that park first, claim it as "unowned" then turn around and charge the rest of the people to sit in it! Opposed to free and willing use of a free resource!
I feel this issue is even harder to detail the nuances a quick search of what is capital brought up.
"an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."
How self-serving... What I'm advocating for is not even acknowledged as a possibility. Because the Idea of ownership is so pervasive in our culture our definitions routinely state that nature is either owned by the state or owned by private interests (as if these are our only choices)... What I am saying is that nature owns itself. We have a 'right' to relate to nature from simply being born here and a right to meet our needs through relating to nature, but we do not have a 'right' to 'own' nature and to gain personal benefit from said 'ownership' and through 'ownership' restrict other beings access to said nature.
We can freely exchange goods and labor all we want! I love that. If your definition of capitalism is a free and voluntary exchange than so be it! I'm on board. However, Capitalism by another definition is:
"an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods"
The ownership of capital! I realize that this idea is extremely pervasive in our society. That the notion of not owning something is hard to conceive. But, there have been and still are vast cultures and societies operating without this notion.
Think about it, we may plant a seed, but it is nature that causes that seed to grow into a fruit to feed us! We didn't go in there and transfer the sunlight into carbon and pull up the nutrients out of the dirt with physical labor. Yet, our society with our hubris sit here and pretend that we 'own' it because we "mixed our labour" with it!
Please don't confuse me for advocating for a state (as we see it even remotely today) I'm not. In fact, without ownership of the commons, there would be scant reason to have a state at all! All we would have is organizations of willing participants working together and sharing in the abundance that nature is, not hoarding and owning our way to poverty, war, and destruction of our natural world.
So to clarify, capitalism is not 'free exchange'. Capitalism is also not our plutocracy we see today. Capitalism in its purest form is the idea of private ownership over nature, and the ability to exploit this ownership for personal gain. There is not a single society in our dominant cultures lineage that details a culture of 'non-ownership' so, we pretend it is 'human nature' and justify our way on through. However, it doesn't take long to study other cultures that lack this notion of 'ownership' to learn how we can radically improve our systems!
Hence is my approach with the transition system of ON (Our NeighbourGood) it works on both sides of understanding to expand this sense of ownership to the whole instead of the self...
"I do not agree that the idea of property is somehow inherently violent."
I think I have been over this with you... So, we have yet to clarify.
Do you think a man coming in and claiming ownership over land that is in use by 1000's of people and removing said people from the land "because they don't 'own' it" is violent? That is the root of our entire capitalistic system today. Taking peoples ability to live (access to resources and land) and removing them (or adding in barriers). Is this not a form of violence?
Edit: I just read your other post, but feel as this one sums up both. However;
"In principle, it is possible on my view to own a forest, and also to sell bottled water. But such things need to be determined on a case by case basis, depending on the particulars of each case. Of course, I agree that if someone was already using a stream, it would not be okey to treat it as unowned and up for grabs."
"if someone was already using a stream, it would not be okey to treat it as unowned and up for grabs." (second for emphasis)
Life is ALWAYS using these life-giving systems to live. Therefore, the simple notion of owning them will ALWAYS impede on their life. This was more obvious with humans before the conquests of capitalism (ownership). Conquests are ONLY possible if you're able to claim ownership! If you bottled a stream for personal use. SO be it, but once you bottle that stream and sell it en-masse for personal gain you are taking more than you need, and infringing on others rights as that stream is reduced (and dried up in many cases). This is the distinction.
Well, we agree on a few things. But there are also some very deep disagreements, which is only natural. The point of discussion is not consensus anyway, but truth. And I appreciate your comments.
One deep disagreement is about the idea that "nature owns itself". I do not find this even remotely plausible. I ascribe rights of ownership exclusively to adult human beings. (Not in virtue of belonging to our particular species, but in virtue of being rational beings). Ownership is all about deciding over that which is owned, and "nature" cannot make any decisions.
If this is what capitalism is, then I support it! Exploiting nature for personal gain is what we do when we cultivate land and grow crops and vegetables or graze our cattle and many other things. With ownership we are able to enjoy the fruits of today's labour tomorrow, without someone else coming along and taking away from us what we have produced. The vegetables that you have grown now belong to you and it is you who gets to decide what to do with them.
We could not have trade without ownership. If the vegetables that you grew did not belong to you, you could not sell them to me, because the concept of "trade" involves the transfer of ownership from one to another.
It is of course true that in growing vegetables we "exploit" the sunlight and nutrients in the soil and much else besides, but this doesn't make the products any less ours. The sunlight is just there (luckily!) for us to use, and is not stolen from anyone.
I'm not sure what this means, but in using natural resources we humans surely "impede" life in some ways and promote it in others. This is inevitable and I don't see it as problematic.
Hmmm, my fault... I was getting too philosophical (thinking 3 steps ahead and need to focus on the first step) and seemed to have gotten off point and may have caused some confusion... Did you look into the distinctions between personal and private property? As you used what I would call personal property:
To protest my notion of private property (which would be the ownership of the land itself not your improvements upon it... )
Trade can absolutely happen with personal property. Trade, however, cannot happen with private property as its ownership is illegitimate. (my car analogy was just an analogy to describe an idea... It would have been better to use land/whole forests/etc... which is what I was actually referring to).
Fruits of one's labor fall into personal property (or one's homestead rather) Thought this can easily be expanded to other enterprises.
To this, I fundamentally disagree. But my path to get to my conclusions was long, arduous and outside the realm of any 'logical' 'rational (aka ratio, a fraction of truth) discussion on such a platform. So, we can just agree to disagree :)
Exploit is a word I used to denounce taking advantage of. Which is what I would say over-meeting your needs for greed... Eating food is not exploiting it. Now, mono-cropping vast swaths of land and destroying all life that once existed on it in order to make tons of money is...
Again a distinction that would be difficult to quantify.
I would say we relate with nature in order to meet our needs. Look at it this way, there is a common saying in business that the best negotiators and best 'salesman' (tradesman) are those who are able to make both parties winners! That is an excellent way to build value and meet needs. This would be an agreeable relationship.
However, there are those in business that make deals so that there are 'winners' and 'losers' these often get a bad reputation in the business world. This is what I would call exploitation. When we abuse and use and profess to own the natural world and continue to make 1 sided business transactions we exploit nature.
When we relate with nature to meet our needs and meet the needs of our natural world then we can become wealthy with our abundance of our needs being met! (random example of a culture who thinks this way, the Mayans used to plant 4 cornstalks in each whole. One for the sky (birds) one for the ground (hogs, rodents) one for their neighbor (who could take 1/4 of the bounty by law) and one for themselves. They still get a bountiful harvest but in a means that everyone is a winner! They also had no concept of ownership of the land... But, that is another story.
I find the distinction between personal and private property arbitrary and lacking any real basis. As I see it, all forms of property is justified in the same way.
But just for the sake of the argument: If private property is inherently violent because, if attacked, you might need to use force to defend it, then why isn't "personal" property violent in the very same way; for, if attacked, you might need to use force to defend such property too? Even a person's right to his or her own body might need to be defended by force, so even this right would come out as inherently violent on this criterion.
To adress the point about historical injustice, consider that you and me find out that your great, great, great, great grandmother stole the land upon which your house now stands from my great, great, great, great grandfather. Does this mean that the land must now be handed over to me, or that you need to pay me compensation? No. You cannot be held responsible for something that someone else did, even if a case could be made that you somehow benefited from it. What your ancestor did to mine was an injustice, but trying to correct that by forcing you to pay me now would only add more injustice. When both the victims and the perpetrators of a past injustice are no longer with us, then we have to let bygones be bygones.
Sure, but millions of people die today because of lack of access created by ownership... There are still victims!
Grandpa didn't steal private property from grandma (your example would be personal property, one I might agree with).
What I'm talking about is 'grandpa' who stole private property from ALL of us, those who were alive that day and those who ever will be alive during his reign of Illegitimate ownership. (meaning there are still victims from this crime)
(What? That's not what I said.)
Private property is inherently violent as it creates inequality, which grows to extreme inequality with time (what we see today). It's violent to force others off land that they lived on for their whole lives. It's violent to limit my access to clean water, it's violent to destroy a mountain for profit, it's violent to pollute a river so I can no longer drink from it, it's violent to poison the earth, it's violent to destroy a whole forest and KILL every living being in it. All of these are only capable with a false notion of "private property" (the 'i own it so I can do what I want' mentality) the distinction between the two is massive. Personal property is relating to the world to meet our needs (not our greeds).
Regardless, I feel like we are both just making the same points :) Also, (based on your responses) I feel like I am doing an awful attempt at relating to you my thoughts... I would love to really connect with you on grounds where we agree, and areas where we can creatively build on ideas, not philosophically argue about them!
Agree to disagree then :)
I think that this is a very important debate, and I hope to write about many of these topics in the future. But setting the philosophical issues aside for now and focusing on practical implications, I have a much more positive view about the consequences of private property. Indeed, I think that private property together with free exchange and free enterprise is what makes possible the incredible rise in prosperity that our world has experienced. Poverty is declining: http://www.humanprogress.org/static/2579
Also, when it comes to environmental issues private ownership of natural resources is beneficial, not harmful. See for example the research of the Property and Environment Research Center: https://www.perc.org/research
I'm discussing completely new cultures here. More complete than the minor changes from feudalism to capitalism. These drastic upgrades to our cultures operating system are going to be mandatory for the societies of the future to finally progress past the same tired issues our dominant culture has been experiencing since inception 2k + years ago!
Poverty is only a metric created post-private ownership.
For millennia people had a high quality of life living off the land and meeting their needs fully outside the economic system (i'm using Africa as an example as it is one still taking place today as the Americas would be my favoured example its more in history).
Today, they are being forced into this 'private ownership paradigm' and now are considered "in poverty" the fact that our economic system is able to alleviate small amounts of problems it created is not a benefit of that system when compared with others.
However, 'poverty' or not the quality of life went down for people who made $0 to when they made $3. Our economic system would look at this $3 gain as a benefit "poverty is declining" we proclaim. But, quality of life is also declining. So, what is the real value to be measuring here. Economic benefit (mostly to the wealthy) or an increase in quality of life for all.
The measure of poverty is a self-serving metric of a flawed system.
Again, everything stated there is within the old paradigm of thinking. Within the context of this cultures economic and political systems... This data would only be relevant if it compared viable alternatives as comparison.
Also, in case you missed it, I actually had written a short blog on private ownership and the environment...
Is Capitalism Responsible For Environmental Destruction? A short thought exercise!
Destroying our natural world only happens because there is value to be made doing so. Which only is possible in the context of private ownership.
It will probably not come as a surprise that I think your analysis is deeply mistaken. This is a highly romanticised image of early human societies. There were some benefits with the hunter-gatherer life style, like their political egalitarianism, but that they enjoyed a high quality of life is a myth.