Property ownership?

[liam]

I suppose this is better suited to somewhere like politics in some sense, however, I was rather considering how absurd it is to apply the term 'mine' to any thing which is not internal to you. For example, how am I to own a house? is there some kind of property that it acquires through my owning of it? how does this work and what are your thoughts?

[Darkstar]

For something you own, you are allowed to use it as you see fit (presuming you don't break the law). For example, if you own a home you can decide who to allow into it, and can decorate it yourself, rather than having everyone come by and mess with it. Compare a home with a public building and you'll soon get the picture. While the government owns public buildings, so you aren't allowed to, say, break things in them, they are open to many people. If you were legally allowed to vandalize public buildings, then that would be as if the building was unowned (although I don't think you are allowed to vandalize even unowned bulidings).

As for other things, well for anything really, it comes down to who can use it. You can let others use it if you want, but you don't have to. If there was no ownership, it would be a pure communist society. Communism like the USSR was mor of a socialist because the government owned everything, but in pure communism people take from a collective pool that no one owns. Imagine, for example, if other people decided they wanted to use your toothbrush to clean the toilet. You wouldn't want that, now would you?

[Tiberius]

Simply put:

As you already said, stuff that is internal to us (such as our own bodies) is owned by us. Likewise, anything we produce using our own bodies (work) is ours. We can exchange the work we do for stuff that others have made with their own bodies (a simple form of bartering). Since bartering in this day and age is rather cumbersome, we have monetary systems which create a valid medium of exchange that can be used instead.

So in effect, we exchange the work we do for money, and the money we have for things that other people have worked on.

[liam]

if you own a home

what is ownership, how is it possible?

While the government owns public buildings, so you aren't allowed to, say, break things in them, they are open to many people.

.
how can the government own things?

Also, your representation of socialism is rather off the mark, the ussr was stalinist, naturally. this basically makes it conservative socialism.

I'm rather at the conclusion that ownership is a social contract

[Tiberius]

At a purely philosophical level, ownership is effectively an agreement in a society. It "seems" fair to most in society that something you produce must be yours, which gives you the basis for ownership, and then trade comes in which allows people to exchange things that they own. Courts determine whether people own stuff or not, based on this social contract.

[Mystic]

I hope one day it's all gone, I mean property ownership, and we value everyone as much as ourselves. That we don't live for ourselves but for all of each other. The currency would not be based on "greed" but "love".

This is my hope. It perhaps is the most delusional hope I have.

[genkaus]

I suppose this is better suited to somewhere like politics in some sense, however, I was rather considering how absurd it is to apply the term 'mine' to any thing which is not internal to you. For example, how am I to own a house? is there some kind of property that it acquires through my owning of it? how does this work and what are your thoughts?

Ownership is the political/social application of a moral principle - everyone should be the bearer of the consequences of his own actions. Applying this concept socially means I should get to use or take advantage of what I produce - thus, what I produce I "own". Since I am free to trade it as well, I can come to own another's fruits of labor by exchanging it for mine. The property that thing acquires is conceptual in nature. It is your right to use and dispose of it as you see fit.

---

I hope one day it's all gone, I mean property ownership, and we value everyone as much as ourselves. That we don't live for ourselves but for all of each other. The currency would not be based on "greed" but "love".

This is my hope. It perhaps is the most delusional hope I have.

I hope that day never comes. That would be the end of humanity.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think a more pressing example of what the OP is asking would be the ownership of land. Clearly none of us are forces of nature (at least not individually,,hehehe) so the comparison of "what we worked on" wouldn't seem to apply to the object we call real estate, at least not for the first in the tree of ownership.

[genkaus]

I think a more pressing example of what the OP is asking would be the ownership of land. Clearly none of us are forces of nature (at least not individually,,hehehe) so the comparison of "what we worked on" wouldn't seem to apply to the object we call real estate, at least not for the first in the tree of ownership.

Why not?

Let's see. We can take a piece of land and clear it of preexisting vegetation. We can make it more fertile. We can make it barren. We can raise its level by putting soil on top and we can decrease it by removing it. It sounds an awful lot familiar to what we do with otherwise naturally occurring material.

There is one good argument I've heard against the concept of ownership - the fact that we don't own the starting raw material which we then put our work into. Thus we have no right to use it in the first place. By that logic, we don't have the starting right to put our work into anything - not the land we may cultivate or build upon, not the minerals we mine and not the animals and plants we kill for food. By that logic, no one - not the government and not the society - can claim ownership of anything. Though I don't know of any argument against this, but if that's the case then life simply wouldn't be possible.

[The Grand Nudger]

Meh, at some point the majority of land sold is "undeveloped" how then do we apply this definition of ownership when no work has gone into it (though admittedly currency has been exchanged in procurement of the deed or title). How was that initial ownership established?