I own this. And that. And YOU!
I have a piece of paper that asserts I own a small
condominium in a pleasant part of Denver
Colorado. I own this because I
paid through the nose. Well . . . truthfully, I borrowed money from a bank who
paid through the nose and I am in the multi-decade process of paying that bank
back. In any event, I, for all intents and purposes own the property (even
though the bank really does). But why does a monetary exchange mean that
someone owns this piece of land? Can’t someone else beat me up for it? Or can
someone who lived their longer lay claim to it?
Philosophically speaking, what do we mean by property
anyway? What would philosophers say about my condo?
Aristotle: Sure that condo is yours and the more that
everyone agrees it’s yours the fewer problems there will be.
Thomas Hobbes: You only own that condo if you can beat
everyone away from it and prove to them how bad ass you are.
James Harrington: If you built that condo, it’s yours.
Robert Filmer: You “own” the condo, but if you misbehave it
can be taken from you.
John Locke: You “own” the condo and if you misbehave it can
be taken from you, but only by a government you have contractually agreed has
the power to do so.
William Blackstone: You own the condo and can kill anyone
that trespasses – including the meddling government.
David Hume: You own that condo because the government allows
you to.
Charles Comte: You can own that condo only if it was earned
through an appropriation of property that ensures no one was harmed
during the acquisition of the property.
Pierre Proudhon: You stole that condo from the people who
built it.
Frederic Bastiat: You own the value of that condo, but the
condo itself isn’t owned by anyone.
This work by Mark Havenner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Photo courtesy of tombothetominator at flickr.com
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