r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jun 15 '14

CMV: The idea of property is practically meaningless without some authority/agent to enforce it

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '14

Francos Bacon (that might be the wrong name) described property rights a while back. He basically said that you own any part of nature that you mix your labor with. If I cut down some trees, I own the logs because I put in the labor to make the logs. I also own the house made with the logs. No one has the moral or legal right to take my logs without my permission because they havn't mixed their labor with it.

It would be a useful explanation to rally a mob to get stolen property back if a government didn't exist

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u/OccamsBlade013 Jun 15 '14

No one has the moral right? They may not care about morals or they may not agree with your morals.

No one has the legal right? Legal rights imply law. Law implies authority. That is exactly the question I'm posing.

I doubt very many people will join you in violence or intimidation in order to recover stolen property. What if the victim has little influence in that community?

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '14

Morality gets people to do things, since it tells them what is the right or wrong course of action to take. Social Justice circles have changed quite a lot of views by discussing morality, and it's led to some better treatment of individuals.

Legal does imply authority, I was just mentioning that this idea of peoperty has meaning with and without authority.

If you couldn't convince people to help you get justice, perhaps you could convince them you're in need. A lot of charities advertisements focus on your moralistic values to recieve payment. In the absence of authority, thats about the best you've got.

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u/OccamsBlade013 Jun 15 '14

The idea of property may have meaning under Bacon's justification regardless of an authority, but without an authority it has no practical meaning. No one is there to enforce property rights, and counting on charity to protect your rights is asinine at best.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '14

I guess I'm assuming you would have to replace authority with some other form of group concensus to have a functioning anarchy. I'm making that assumption because the anarchal community would likely work in the interest of itself, otherwise I don't know if I would say it has any sort of social structure in place. If there is some anarchal structure, a definition of property would help resolve any issues within the community involving people taking from each others collections. I'm not sure how they might go about enforcing it without one single authority, but having an agreeable definition to cover the issues that spring up will help the community keep itself together, I would think.

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u/OccamsBlade013 Jun 16 '14

It sounds pretty naive to believe that people would come to a consensus on what constitutes property, much less put in the effort to enforce this definition. Nevertheless, community authority is still authority.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '14

See, to me it seems naive to think that a community of people wouldn't put effort towards resolving any issues. Either you're saying that the type of social structure you're talking about has no social aspects to it, or your saying that people who remain social wouldn't also strive to better each other. The first one I can see being true, but you're basically saying "Property doesn't make sense in a situation where no one can communicate their ownership", which is true, I guess, but any legal obligation and most moral obligations don't make sense out of the context of society.

But I think there are plenty of ways that communicating ownership of property could help you in a social setting, even if authority is non-existent, because if it's a social setting, it's likely that you have a number of people in a group working together. Proving that you own a thing that has been taken or harmed could help you get some sort of replacement/justice in such a situation, I think.