A rather popular view among the Left (at least in Europe) is like «pre-Columbian noble savages could not understand land ownership, therefore land ownership should not exist.»
Well, if we did away with everything someone, somewhere is unable to understand... we'd have precious little left.
If you'd like a real pep talk, and I thought of you while I watched this, treat yourself to this David Icke interview about 2026.
Even if you have to ignore the lizard and energy-feeding multidimensional beings aspects, 99% of what he says is right on, and it should give you a jump-start. Enjoy!
I get it. It's a matter of getting past his opening salvo, then it becomes much more pragmatic. Not trying to sell you on it. Some things are a bridge too far.
I’d love to expand the discussion of ownership to owning ourselves and holding our own actions accountable. When we take by force, we have given up ownership of our own integrity and that never ends well.
When we take ownership of our problems, individually speaking, we figure out how to resolve them, because we have to. No one is there to bail us out. If we refuse ownership of our self-induced problems, nothing grows for the better and inevitably it grows worse.
And, doesn’t that sound like socialism – no ownership of the self, no responsibility for our actions - creating a tyrannical society from within?
It entirely does. And people who incline in a socialist direction are far more likely to have an external locus of control. Everything is someone else's fault.
Except it's not. No one's problems are because someone else is a billionaire.
Fascinating take on legitimate property claims. The homesteading principle you lay out is pretty clean, if someone transforms unowned land they get to claim it but only what they can actually use. I've thought alot about this after visiting a few ghost towns out West where people just staked claims and walked away. The Texas history is wild bc it shows how many times the "owner" label changed hands without any real justification beyond force
How can we know what can be yours? What is your rightful domain? It can only be the extension of your self-ownership out into the world. So long as you have not taken from others, your property is entirely yours.
That is the history of the world. All land worth having has been conquered. The Apache are native to Texas. The Comanche ran them out. The Visigoths took Spain from Roman's (who conquered it earlier). The Moors conquered Spain...
Almost all cases of of people entering completely uninhabited land are lost to prehistory. There were native people on Greenland when the Vikings found it and invented marketing by calling it Greenland. Even homesteading in the American west was an act of taking a tiny percentage of the range of a different people (who generally killed or ran off the previous occupants). Sometimes that taking would have involved voluntary exchange with a local tribe, but in areas of overlapping ranges no one with a European mindset would have been willing to buy the land from 3 separate groups.
"... packs are pretty good about respecting each other's territorial ranges."
Actually it's packs are damn good at protecting their territorial ranges or else they loose them. The only reason one pack doesn't invade another's territory is they're sure they'll lose too much blood and fur to make it worth while if they do so.
Mex Tex, Tex Tex, U.S. Tex, might makes boundaries in all cases.
"All they have is force." Yep but somebody will always have force.
I think this must be considered in developing a distributed nation as well; speak softly but carry a Desert Eagle.
No need to go .50 cal. though, that's just plain ostentatious! When I bought mine, a .41 mag. was all they had on the shelf. I'd planned to buy a .44 mag. barrel for it but when I found the .41 penetrates 4 two by fours almost exiting the fourth, I stuck with what I bought.
Agreed on all. Rights are not magic force fields. If they are violated by violence, they must be protected by violence.
That said, recognition of rights is also a real thing. The wolves don't fight >constantly<. The claims are established, and they know them. Animals mark territory in other ways. Many have non-lethal or even purely display methods of reminding others of their claim. We have property titles, no trespassing signs, and laws. It's all the same stuff.
The .50 is the gun that everyone at the range stops what they're doing and turns to listen to. And the kick on that thing is a bit much. I only fired one once, though (at a range in LA with cops and gang-bangers side by side!), so maybe I would get used to it.
1911; sweet. I like thumb safeties, Glocks aren't for me.
Again though, admittedly my opinion; the .50s are just for showoffs, your 1911 .45, my Desert Eagle .41 mag., not elephant guns but then, not too many rabid elephants in either of our neighborhoods.
This "land ownership," beyond what anyOne uses, is made possible by paying armies to enFORCE the will of the Ones in the governmafia. Without the need to account for Our energy added into a system, without "money" in other words, with the ability to live richly, We will all...
One clarification. This applies to homesteading of unowned places and things. Once things are owned, they can be traded in voluntary transactions, and even accumulated beyond that which one can reasonably use.
For example—I have 20 acres in Montana. I bought it with the hope of possibly using it one day, but I have not used it. Still, it is mine. I acquired it in a voluntary transaction, and it is not the last piece of land, or timberland, or ponderosa pine, in the world. Therefore, my ownership does not run afoul of the Lockean Proviso. It is mine, totally and completely, even though I am not using it.
It cannot be any other way and yet still maintain peace and harmony. Who can say what someone is using? I have 20 shirts. (I am guessing, but it is at least that many.) Could I get by with 15? Sure. Ten? Yeah. One? Who decides what is "enough"? Same thing with surviving vs. thriving. Could I live on bread and water and vitamin pills? Probably. But is someone going to say that that is all I can have because it is all I "need"? The system of voluntary transactions is much better. The 20th century is piled high with corpses of people who got in the way of attempts to do away with that system and instead impose a system where someone decides what people "need."
You only own what you can control. And control must be enforced, either by a moral/ethical framework to which all parties agree, (read tribalism, religion etc.)or a militant structure defined by laws that punish those who don't comply (government). Ultimately, ownership boils down to the one who is the most organized and has the most firepower.
Where I am now, the natives believed that everything an individual did was for the good of the tribe. Personal ownership was defined as whatever you could carry around with you. If you left your bow lying around, any tribal member was free to use it. If you carried it with you it was yours.
Suburbs in Texas today consist of postage stamp size lots surrounded by head high fences with a house, a garage in which a personal motor vehicle or two is parked. Every house has its own stove, refrigerator, washing machine and dryer and lawn mower. Few suburbanites even know their neighbors, let alone share their possessions. As long as the "owner" pays their taxes, mortgage, obeys myriad laws etc. they are allowed to occupy that "property."
I recently visited a small beach community in California. My sister was pointing out the houses that were actually occupied (it was easier than indicating which houses were vacant vacation homes.) Less than 50% were occupied by full time residents. Meanwhile, not too far away was a brushy area where the homeless lived in tents or under tarps.
The bottom line is that true ownership is control, and the people or institutions with the most firepower are the ones in control. The moral/ethical contingent was relegated to the dustbin of history long ago.
"The moral/ethical contingent was relegated to the dustbin of history long ago."
—I think the moral component is always here, and so is the force component. The Hopi were peaceful; the Comanche were not. But the moral aspect is always there.
"Less than 50% were occupied by full time residents. Meanwhile, not too far away was a brushy area where the homeless lived in tents or under tarps."
—Is it your contention that people should not have second homes? That properties should be taken by others if the owners are not there for half the year?
I don't think people should be forbidden or have stuff confiscated and redistributed. But I do think people should check their level of greed. I have three pairs of shoes. I probably don't need that many. I guess I'm a hoarder.
I agree. (Not about your number of shoes, but the rest 🤣.) As long as it is voluntary, we should regularly examine our behavior to see if it is good.
Greed isn't just bad for others or the planet, by the way. It's also bad for the individual himself. So that's one more reason to check oneself before one wrecks oneself!
"Where I am now, the natives believed that everything an individual did was for the good of the tribe. Personal ownership was defined as whatever you could carry around with you. If you left your bow lying around, any tribal member was free to use it. If you carried it with you it was yours."
—What if someone did not want to be holding something at that moment, but had spent a lot of time creating it and didn't want it to simply be taken?
Specifically, do I forfeit my possessions when I go to sleep if they are not under me?
If so, why am I making a quality bow?
I suspect a lot of the traditions of these tribes have been twisted over the years for political purposes. The communist loves to rewrite history because his history is so horrible.
Yes, I suspect this is frequently the case—things about native tribes are misread, embellished, or romanticized to suit an agenda. Not always, of course, but I have seen it a lot.
"They were in touch with the land." (They drove a dozen megafauna species to extinction and would deforest entire areas.)
"They lived in harmony." (If you don't count the ones who enslaved, tortured, and massacred their enemies.)
A tribe is an extended family. Do you begrudge feeding your children or caring for your elderly parents? You make the best bow you can because you are doing it for your tribe. It is yours as long as you are carrying it with you. You may be the best bow maker in your tribe but might not be the best hunter. Logic would dictate that the best hunter would ideally have the best bow. The idea of possessing is cultural and in our culture has risen to the status of an illness.
Admittedly, my views on tribal life are more idealistic than real. But if we strive to be autonomous we must also cultivate the ideal in ourselves as examples to others. This is how voluntary culture forms. I see this as the only reasonable alternative to an external social control system.
We can definitely agree that if individuals do not govern their own behavior from within, someone will govern them from without. So yes, to whatever extent we can maximize internal control and good, pro-social behavior, the less control a society needs.
But there is also a problematic conflation here (and just about everyone does it) between two strains of morality: MUSTs and SHOULDs.
You must not rape, kill, torture, steal, etc. You must not violate the consent of others in their rightful domain of person, property, and liberty. And if you cause a harm, you must make some sort of recompense.
You SHOULD be nice, take care of others, etc. But that is not enforceable. I (or my assigned agents) can rightly force you to make recompense if you steal from me or assault me. But we can do nothing to you if you are just a rude or selfish person.
This, I think, is where a touch of your idealism is creeping in. Yes, if people control their own behavior, things will be better. But some people won't, and so mechanisms for justice and security are required. (As a market anarchist, I do not believe those mechanisms ought to come from involuntary governance, but something is needed nonetheless.)
You ought to be free to try to build the kind of community you think would produce the best life. You ought to be free to include or exclude anyone from this community, on a mutually consensual basis. And you ought to be free to govern your own affairs. I hope you get to try someday!
I must also agree with Brian below that there is a real danger here. I've seen it before. People have a toe in the libertarian/voluntaryist world, but they simultaneously have attitudes about property that veer dangerously close to communism. And interestingly, this is often accompanied by a rose-colored or stylized view of tribal life.
You are free to hold those beliefs and to try to create a society in which one person's bow or hut or bowl of soup (or spouse) can be claimed by another if that other is absent. But you are not free to attempt to create a society in which people are forced to live that way. That distinction must be clear.
As it happens, I do not think such a society is possible at anything other than the smallest scale. Such attitudes about property run contrary to nature; I do not believe they have existed successfully in any society of any appreciable size.
I take it you have no family? Or experience with handmade bows.
Family has its own issues with jealousy and power struggles. The bigger the family and the more interconnected, the more pronounced these issues are. Do you not think a tribe would experience the same? People jockey for position. That is how we are wired, as are all pack animals. Do you pay rent for your cousin who is too lazy to get a job or your nephew who just seems to have a run of bad luck that an objective outsider would say was the result of his decisions?
If someone else can confiscate my property (bow) while I am cleaning the elk I killed with it, we have a problem. If I voluntarily give it to him because he uses a bow better than I, while I make better bows, that is voluntary cooperation.
Possession is not cultural. Dogs understand possession. Unless trained otherwise, they will not tolerate another living thing taking their stuff.
Everything that does not belong to someone gets destroyed. You can look up "tragedy of the commons" if you like. If the bow isn't mine, it's the next guy's problem to perform maintenance.
Your post sounds a lot like, "real communism would be great. Let's try it again."
I get your comment about the rough personal dynamics within a large family. Tribes often grow too large and then develop unresolvable conflicts. At that point a few families might leave the tribe and move to a different territory. Eventually overpopulation makes this impossible. Conflict then moves to warfare.
I still say that possession is cultural or rather the social rules governing possession is cultural. You say that dogs are hard wired that way unless trained otherwise. That training is their culture. Humans are essentially hairless bonobos, and yet we build shelters, create social rules and morals, wear clothes and invent tools to make our lives more complex. We've moved a bit beyond our animal nature. But that's a whole convoluted story by itself.
Generally, communism works at the immediate family level and not beyond. As Dwight mentioned, you don't keep a ledger for what your wife and children owe you. Voluntary communes of unrelated people tend to fall apart, even when they have the ability to kick out members. My question to those who support communist attitudes is this. Why do people flee the system when they can? Even the idealistic who voluntarily join a commune tend to leave.
I would suggest there is a technological component as well. The more it is possible to escape a collective and survive/thrive the more likely it is that high performers will opt to do so.
In paleo times, some tasks simply required a number of people. If I was 10% more productive than Bob, but Bob's presence made the hunt a success, it meant I lived. Today, subsidizing others costs 20% of my income and I receive no benefit. After all, what do I get in return for providing food, housing, medical care... for those who refuse to work?
Rules are created by a society, but when they conflict with human nature, those societies fail.
"Few suburbanites even know their neighbors, let alone share their possessions."
—This does appear to be an issue. But as it happens, we hang out with our neighbors. We have big parties in the backyard, etc. We share food back and forth.
I wonder if there are actual data on the degree to which we do/don't know each other and how that compares to 50/100/200 years back…
I once participated in a discussion about why folks didn't know their neighbors and the increase in neighborhood crime. One older commenter from the South said it happened for two reasons: television and air conditioning. Before those were common people came home from work and sat on their porches. People could be their neighbors doing the same. Conversations would happen. If a stranger walked down the street he would be greeted or confronted. Now we have the internet, video games and social media and people have withdrawn deeper into their caves. People mostly fear their neighbors because they don't know them.
I think I will make a huge vat of pumpkin soup and then go onto our neighborhood Facebook group and offer a portion to anyone who wants one.
I will do something neighborly, rather than just complaining about the decline in neighborliness. If nothing else, it will be an interesting experiment.
"And control must be enforced, either by a moral/ethical framework to which all parties agree, (read tribalism, religion etc.)or a militant structure defined by laws that punish those who don't comply (government)."
—Or by private enforcement, either by owners themselves or private agencies acting on their behalf.
Back in the day of Spain and France the justification for ownership derived from a confusion of the Divine Right of Kings - our king is duly authorized by our Heavenly Lord to act in His authority and as instruments of that authority we take this land as his. This presumption of divine authority was girded by the establishment of missions with clergy as willing pawns to forcibly violate native free will into Christianity. Somehow when the gold and silver petered out the self appointed noble motive was soon forgotten.
It was only the later settlers, predominantly true Christians, who brought their individual faith in God along with their freely chosen industry to settle the land.
A rather popular view among the Left (at least in Europe) is like «pre-Columbian noble savages could not understand land ownership, therefore land ownership should not exist.»
Well, if we did away with everything someone, somewhere is unable to understand... we'd have precious little left.
«pre-Columbian noble savages could not understand land ownership, therefore land ownership should not exist.»
—OMG, it is soooooo irritating.
(Sorry to sound like a Valley Girl, but seriously—gag me with a chainsaw.)
If you'd like a real pep talk, and I thought of you while I watched this, treat yourself to this David Icke interview about 2026.
Even if you have to ignore the lizard and energy-feeding multidimensional beings aspects, 99% of what he says is right on, and it should give you a jump-start. Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/PDDVe6xAeq0
When you say pep talk, are you being sarcastic? Because the first sixty seconds did not make me feel especially peppy…
stay with it
I know you will like where he ends up
Eesh, I really tend to avoid stuff like this. Can you summarize it for me, or is it unsummarizable?
I get it. It's a matter of getting past his opening salvo, then it becomes much more pragmatic. Not trying to sell you on it. Some things are a bridge too far.
I listened to the most of it. I found aspects of it helpful; thank you.
well you honored me by doing so.
he is definitely an acquired taste.
and some people are really put off by some of his ideas.
a lot of people actually.
so thank you
Great read, thanks!
I’d love to expand the discussion of ownership to owning ourselves and holding our own actions accountable. When we take by force, we have given up ownership of our own integrity and that never ends well.
When we take ownership of our problems, individually speaking, we figure out how to resolve them, because we have to. No one is there to bail us out. If we refuse ownership of our self-induced problems, nothing grows for the better and inevitably it grows worse.
And, doesn’t that sound like socialism – no ownership of the self, no responsibility for our actions - creating a tyrannical society from within?
It entirely does. And people who incline in a socialist direction are far more likely to have an external locus of control. Everything is someone else's fault.
Except it's not. No one's problems are because someone else is a billionaire.
We must take responsibility. And indeed, as you say, and as we talked about here (https://christophercook.substack.com/p/consentism-voluntaryism-natural-law-truth) and here (https://christophercook.substack.com/p/captain-beautiful-mysterious-ship-self-ownership-individualism), you can only be held accountable for your actions if you have self-ownership.
Fascinating take on legitimate property claims. The homesteading principle you lay out is pretty clean, if someone transforms unowned land they get to claim it but only what they can actually use. I've thought alot about this after visiting a few ghost towns out West where people just staked claims and walked away. The Texas history is wild bc it shows how many times the "owner" label changed hands without any real justification beyond force
Thank you. I think it is further backed up here https://christophercook.substack.com/p/captain-beautiful-mysterious-ship-self-ownership-individualism and here https://christophercook.substack.com/p/consentism-voluntaryism-natural-law-truth.
How can we know what can be yours? What is your rightful domain? It can only be the extension of your self-ownership out into the world. So long as you have not taken from others, your property is entirely yours.
That is the history of the world. All land worth having has been conquered. The Apache are native to Texas. The Comanche ran them out. The Visigoths took Spain from Roman's (who conquered it earlier). The Moors conquered Spain...
Almost all cases of of people entering completely uninhabited land are lost to prehistory. There were native people on Greenland when the Vikings found it and invented marketing by calling it Greenland. Even homesteading in the American west was an act of taking a tiny percentage of the range of a different people (who generally killed or ran off the previous occupants). Sometimes that taking would have involved voluntary exchange with a local tribe, but in areas of overlapping ranges no one with a European mindset would have been willing to buy the land from 3 separate groups.
"... packs are pretty good about respecting each other's territorial ranges."
Actually it's packs are damn good at protecting their territorial ranges or else they loose them. The only reason one pack doesn't invade another's territory is they're sure they'll lose too much blood and fur to make it worth while if they do so.
Mex Tex, Tex Tex, U.S. Tex, might makes boundaries in all cases.
"All they have is force." Yep but somebody will always have force.
I think this must be considered in developing a distributed nation as well; speak softly but carry a Desert Eagle.
No need to go .50 cal. though, that's just plain ostentatious! When I bought mine, a .41 mag. was all they had on the shelf. I'd planned to buy a .44 mag. barrel for it but when I found the .41 penetrates 4 two by fours almost exiting the fourth, I stuck with what I bought.
Agreed on all. Rights are not magic force fields. If they are violated by violence, they must be protected by violence.
That said, recognition of rights is also a real thing. The wolves don't fight >constantly<. The claims are established, and they know them. Animals mark territory in other ways. Many have non-lethal or even purely display methods of reminding others of their claim. We have property titles, no trespassing signs, and laws. It's all the same stuff.
The .50 is the gun that everyone at the range stops what they're doing and turns to listen to. And the kick on that thing is a bit much. I only fired one once, though (at a range in LA with cops and gang-bangers side by side!), so maybe I would get used to it.
But I am happy with my 1911 :-)
1911; sweet. I like thumb safeties, Glocks aren't for me.
Again though, admittedly my opinion; the .50s are just for showoffs, your 1911 .45, my Desert Eagle .41 mag., not elephant guns but then, not too many rabid elephants in either of our neighborhoods.
Perhaps the key is to have lots of different weapons of many types!
This "land ownership," beyond what anyOne uses, is made possible by paying armies to enFORCE the will of the Ones in the governmafia. Without the need to account for Our energy added into a system, without "money" in other words, with the ability to live richly, We will all...
Own What You Use (article): https://amaterasusolar.substack.com/p/own-what-you-use
Good article showing how governmafias are illegitimate and We own the land We use.
One clarification. This applies to homesteading of unowned places and things. Once things are owned, they can be traded in voluntary transactions, and even accumulated beyond that which one can reasonably use.
For example—I have 20 acres in Montana. I bought it with the hope of possibly using it one day, but I have not used it. Still, it is mine. I acquired it in a voluntary transaction, and it is not the last piece of land, or timberland, or ponderosa pine, in the world. Therefore, my ownership does not run afoul of the Lockean Proviso. It is mine, totally and completely, even though I am not using it.
It cannot be any other way and yet still maintain peace and harmony. Who can say what someone is using? I have 20 shirts. (I am guessing, but it is at least that many.) Could I get by with 15? Sure. Ten? Yeah. One? Who decides what is "enough"? Same thing with surviving vs. thriving. Could I live on bread and water and vitamin pills? Probably. But is someone going to say that that is all I can have because it is all I "need"? The system of voluntary transactions is much better. The 20th century is piled high with corpses of people who got in the way of attempts to do away with that system and instead impose a system where someone decides what people "need."
If You have attachment to things, and they do not belong to Others, then they are Yours. Even nostalgic attachment. So yeah. Haha!
Wish I has one acre of land anywhere, but… I have nothing to build with (including a body that could do it) and would likely die. [sigh]
I too wish you had that one acre of land. Life here on Earth can be rather unfair.
There’s a major understatement! LOL! [hugs!]
🤗
You only own what you can control. And control must be enforced, either by a moral/ethical framework to which all parties agree, (read tribalism, religion etc.)or a militant structure defined by laws that punish those who don't comply (government). Ultimately, ownership boils down to the one who is the most organized and has the most firepower.
Where I am now, the natives believed that everything an individual did was for the good of the tribe. Personal ownership was defined as whatever you could carry around with you. If you left your bow lying around, any tribal member was free to use it. If you carried it with you it was yours.
Suburbs in Texas today consist of postage stamp size lots surrounded by head high fences with a house, a garage in which a personal motor vehicle or two is parked. Every house has its own stove, refrigerator, washing machine and dryer and lawn mower. Few suburbanites even know their neighbors, let alone share their possessions. As long as the "owner" pays their taxes, mortgage, obeys myriad laws etc. they are allowed to occupy that "property."
I recently visited a small beach community in California. My sister was pointing out the houses that were actually occupied (it was easier than indicating which houses were vacant vacation homes.) Less than 50% were occupied by full time residents. Meanwhile, not too far away was a brushy area where the homeless lived in tents or under tarps.
The bottom line is that true ownership is control, and the people or institutions with the most firepower are the ones in control. The moral/ethical contingent was relegated to the dustbin of history long ago.
"The moral/ethical contingent was relegated to the dustbin of history long ago."
—I think the moral component is always here, and so is the force component. The Hopi were peaceful; the Comanche were not. But the moral aspect is always there.
"Less than 50% were occupied by full time residents. Meanwhile, not too far away was a brushy area where the homeless lived in tents or under tarps."
—Is it your contention that people should not have second homes? That properties should be taken by others if the owners are not there for half the year?
I don't think people should be forbidden or have stuff confiscated and redistributed. But I do think people should check their level of greed. I have three pairs of shoes. I probably don't need that many. I guess I'm a hoarder.
I agree. (Not about your number of shoes, but the rest 🤣.) As long as it is voluntary, we should regularly examine our behavior to see if it is good.
Greed isn't just bad for others or the planet, by the way. It's also bad for the individual himself. So that's one more reason to check oneself before one wrecks oneself!
"Where I am now, the natives believed that everything an individual did was for the good of the tribe. Personal ownership was defined as whatever you could carry around with you. If you left your bow lying around, any tribal member was free to use it. If you carried it with you it was yours."
—What if someone did not want to be holding something at that moment, but had spent a lot of time creating it and didn't want it to simply be taken?
Specifically, do I forfeit my possessions when I go to sleep if they are not under me?
If so, why am I making a quality bow?
I suspect a lot of the traditions of these tribes have been twisted over the years for political purposes. The communist loves to rewrite history because his history is so horrible.
Yes, I suspect this is frequently the case—things about native tribes are misread, embellished, or romanticized to suit an agenda. Not always, of course, but I have seen it a lot.
"They were in touch with the land." (They drove a dozen megafauna species to extinction and would deforest entire areas.)
"They lived in harmony." (If you don't count the ones who enslaved, tortured, and massacred their enemies.)
Etc.
A tribe is an extended family. Do you begrudge feeding your children or caring for your elderly parents? You make the best bow you can because you are doing it for your tribe. It is yours as long as you are carrying it with you. You may be the best bow maker in your tribe but might not be the best hunter. Logic would dictate that the best hunter would ideally have the best bow. The idea of possessing is cultural and in our culture has risen to the status of an illness.
Admittedly, my views on tribal life are more idealistic than real. But if we strive to be autonomous we must also cultivate the ideal in ourselves as examples to others. This is how voluntary culture forms. I see this as the only reasonable alternative to an external social control system.
We can definitely agree that if individuals do not govern their own behavior from within, someone will govern them from without. So yes, to whatever extent we can maximize internal control and good, pro-social behavior, the less control a society needs.
But there is also a problematic conflation here (and just about everyone does it) between two strains of morality: MUSTs and SHOULDs.
You must not rape, kill, torture, steal, etc. You must not violate the consent of others in their rightful domain of person, property, and liberty. And if you cause a harm, you must make some sort of recompense.
You SHOULD be nice, take care of others, etc. But that is not enforceable. I (or my assigned agents) can rightly force you to make recompense if you steal from me or assault me. But we can do nothing to you if you are just a rude or selfish person.
This, I think, is where a touch of your idealism is creeping in. Yes, if people control their own behavior, things will be better. But some people won't, and so mechanisms for justice and security are required. (As a market anarchist, I do not believe those mechanisms ought to come from involuntary governance, but something is needed nonetheless.)
You ought to be free to try to build the kind of community you think would produce the best life. You ought to be free to include or exclude anyone from this community, on a mutually consensual basis. And you ought to be free to govern your own affairs. I hope you get to try someday!
I must also agree with Brian below that there is a real danger here. I've seen it before. People have a toe in the libertarian/voluntaryist world, but they simultaneously have attitudes about property that veer dangerously close to communism. And interestingly, this is often accompanied by a rose-colored or stylized view of tribal life.
You are free to hold those beliefs and to try to create a society in which one person's bow or hut or bowl of soup (or spouse) can be claimed by another if that other is absent. But you are not free to attempt to create a society in which people are forced to live that way. That distinction must be clear.
As it happens, I do not think such a society is possible at anything other than the smallest scale. Such attitudes about property run contrary to nature; I do not believe they have existed successfully in any society of any appreciable size.
Thank you for writing my reply.
🤝
I take it you have no family? Or experience with handmade bows.
Family has its own issues with jealousy and power struggles. The bigger the family and the more interconnected, the more pronounced these issues are. Do you not think a tribe would experience the same? People jockey for position. That is how we are wired, as are all pack animals. Do you pay rent for your cousin who is too lazy to get a job or your nephew who just seems to have a run of bad luck that an objective outsider would say was the result of his decisions?
If someone else can confiscate my property (bow) while I am cleaning the elk I killed with it, we have a problem. If I voluntarily give it to him because he uses a bow better than I, while I make better bows, that is voluntary cooperation.
Possession is not cultural. Dogs understand possession. Unless trained otherwise, they will not tolerate another living thing taking their stuff.
Everything that does not belong to someone gets destroyed. You can look up "tragedy of the commons" if you like. If the bow isn't mine, it's the next guy's problem to perform maintenance.
Your post sounds a lot like, "real communism would be great. Let's try it again."
I get your comment about the rough personal dynamics within a large family. Tribes often grow too large and then develop unresolvable conflicts. At that point a few families might leave the tribe and move to a different territory. Eventually overpopulation makes this impossible. Conflict then moves to warfare.
I still say that possession is cultural or rather the social rules governing possession is cultural. You say that dogs are hard wired that way unless trained otherwise. That training is their culture. Humans are essentially hairless bonobos, and yet we build shelters, create social rules and morals, wear clothes and invent tools to make our lives more complex. We've moved a bit beyond our animal nature. But that's a whole convoluted story by itself.
Generally, communism works at the immediate family level and not beyond. As Dwight mentioned, you don't keep a ledger for what your wife and children owe you. Voluntary communes of unrelated people tend to fall apart, even when they have the ability to kick out members. My question to those who support communist attitudes is this. Why do people flee the system when they can? Even the idealistic who voluntarily join a commune tend to leave.
I would suggest there is a technological component as well. The more it is possible to escape a collective and survive/thrive the more likely it is that high performers will opt to do so.
In paleo times, some tasks simply required a number of people. If I was 10% more productive than Bob, but Bob's presence made the hunt a success, it meant I lived. Today, subsidizing others costs 20% of my income and I receive no benefit. After all, what do I get in return for providing food, housing, medical care... for those who refuse to work?
Rules are created by a society, but when they conflict with human nature, those societies fail.
"Few suburbanites even know their neighbors, let alone share their possessions."
—This does appear to be an issue. But as it happens, we hang out with our neighbors. We have big parties in the backyard, etc. We share food back and forth.
I wonder if there are actual data on the degree to which we do/don't know each other and how that compares to 50/100/200 years back…
I once participated in a discussion about why folks didn't know their neighbors and the increase in neighborhood crime. One older commenter from the South said it happened for two reasons: television and air conditioning. Before those were common people came home from work and sat on their porches. People could be their neighbors doing the same. Conversations would happen. If a stranger walked down the street he would be greeted or confronted. Now we have the internet, video games and social media and people have withdrawn deeper into their caves. People mostly fear their neighbors because they don't know them.
Makes a lot of sense.
I think I will make a huge vat of pumpkin soup and then go onto our neighborhood Facebook group and offer a portion to anyone who wants one.
I will do something neighborly, rather than just complaining about the decline in neighborliness. If nothing else, it will be an interesting experiment.
That's an astute observation about TV and ac.
Could see their neighbors
"You only own what you can control."
—From a practical standpoint, yes.
"And control must be enforced, either by a moral/ethical framework to which all parties agree, (read tribalism, religion etc.)or a militant structure defined by laws that punish those who don't comply (government)."
—Or by private enforcement, either by owners themselves or private agencies acting on their behalf.
Back in the day of Spain and France the justification for ownership derived from a confusion of the Divine Right of Kings - our king is duly authorized by our Heavenly Lord to act in His authority and as instruments of that authority we take this land as his. This presumption of divine authority was girded by the establishment of missions with clergy as willing pawns to forcibly violate native free will into Christianity. Somehow when the gold and silver petered out the self appointed noble motive was soon forgotten.
It was only the later settlers, predominantly true Christians, who brought their individual faith in God along with their freely chosen industry to settle the land.
It is good that the divine right of kings is mostly in the dustbin of history. The end of an error…
Agreed, even the whimpering vestiges of it ie “church of England” is largely a mockery of true Christianity.
Congratulations on your anniversary
Good read
Thank you
That is very kind—thank you!!