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8 Private Property and Common Wealth

Restating a few principles: very little exists in nature in a format that is ready to be consumed, but it requires man to labor upon it to make it fit for consumption. The incentive to undertake that labor is the expectation that it will benefit the man who undertakes it - and for this reason the concept of property is necessary in a civilized society. It is this respect for property that supports the incentive to produce and eliminates conflicts among men.

It is convenient for some to divorce entirely a tangible thing from the effort that was required to create it. The ownership of property is very often about the ownership of ourselves, the right to take action, and the right to benefit from our own activities. The thief may covet a thing, but what he really steals is the effort of those who had produced it.

Opponents of property suggest that all physical material in the world is the gift of a divine force that cannot be claimed by any individual - though they generally present this argument in the process of attempting to obtain things by taking them by force or fraud from others. Their incentives are clear enough, and a harmonious and productive society is not among them. (EN: He rants on about this for a while, denigrating the character of those who claim property is theft while seeking to claim it for themselves - it's excessive.)

There's an interesting bit in which he attempts to justify property by suggesting that it is naturally inclined to fall into the possession of those who can make the best use of it. There need be no parliament to decide how things are to be apportioned among men, as the free market does this naturally: those who can profit best are willing to pay the most.

(EN: It's a sound argument, and holds well in a context where all things are owned. The problem is in determining how something that is not assigned an owner can be assigned to one. The history of how things came to be owned is largely moot, and the question of how some new thing is claimed is only rarely useful, so I will skirt those topics.)

He transitions to the concept of things that exist in the "communal domain" - those that exist in a natural or unclaimed state that are available for anyone to claim. Upon claiming these things, they are transferred to a state of being property of their claimant, though there can be some haggling over what constitutes a valid claim to property. More troublesome are the things that are not available to claim, but available to use. No man owns the water in a river, and all men are permitted to enjoy it unconditionally - though conflicts invariably arise when the use that one man has for it obstructs or negates the use others might make of it.

He returns again to the notion of value being created by labor upon natural resources. A useful thing is only created by effort, and only coveted for the effort it took to make it. If a man's product is valued only for the material components, another man is able to make the same product of the same materials - but when he desires the product of another man, he desires to benefit from the effort put into fashioning it. It is therefore the effort that creates the basis of ownership of a thing. (EN: The danger here is that this would place materials that have not been worked upon or gathered into public domain - the value of land is its potential as a source of material, even if labor has not been applied to harvest the value.)

Thus when it is said that one man is richer than another, it is a reflection that he has created more value than the other. This holds, whether the creation is by means of toil and manual labor or the use of his mind, which is often more efficient in creating value. This is often conveniently overlooked by those who covet wealth.

In comparing the welfare two villages or nations to one another, it is all too common simply to look at wealth. Neither of these is particularly meaningful. Wealth is stored value that has not been consumed, and a miser can accumulate vast wealth while living a deprived life. Neither can one look solely at the inventory of goods in a market, as people may live happily providing for their own needs. Neither can one measure the amount of time spent at labor, as no two men require the same amount of time to provide for their needs.

The prosperity of a people depends on the degree to which their needs are satisfied and the unpleasantness of the labor required to satisfy them. A person may appear to have nothing and to do very little, and if his needs are met he may be far happier than a man who has a great deal of wealth and spends considerable time earning even more. He proposes that progress is best measured by the number of hours or days that must be spent in pursuit of a specific need.

There's a roundabout example, in which he points out that in France of his time, the average laborer would work 45 to 60 days to produce enough wheat to feed himself for a year - a return of about 6 to 8 days of sustenance per day of labor. (EN: No comparison follows, but it is a common economic indicator to assess the percentage of time that is spent on raising food by looking at the agricultural workforce. In developed nations it tends to be 1-5%, and in impoverished ones it can be 50% or more - though there does not seem to be a consideration of whether the product is consumed domestically or exported.)

Another example, about clothing this time, considers it from a commercial perspective: the price of a suit is compared to the number of hours of common labor it requires to earn that price. In his time and location, a person would work twenty days to afford the price of a common suit. He suggests that prior to the industrial revolution, it would cost four hundred days' effort.

He considers the cost in terms of labor, and finds little reason for the complaints for the plight of the industrial worker - he is far better off than his medieval counterpart in terms of the amount of effort he must expend to provide for his necessities. It is also worth considering that it is because of industrialization that so many men may engage in pursuits less strenuous than farm labor.

He then swings back to the notion of property, specifically capital. It is ownership of capital that makes such a high level of productivity possible. It is for this reason in which you can witness that those who have private property often have more property - its lack is an obstacle to progress and productivity. He believes it to be a fundamental flaw in theories of communal property to assume that man would continue to exert the same amount of effort if he was not rewarded individually.

While the technical improvements of the industrial era are given a great deal of credit for the improvement of man's condition, this was not done in isolation. The major political change of the time set men free of their masters, to enjoy the fruit of their own labor rather than surrender all to their feudal lords. It is not coincidence that men who were given the right to hold property became more productive - it is causality.

Another problem is the arbitrary manner in which "property" is defined by certain theories. Some suggest that some things are property and others are not - but there is not a rational standard that divides the two: all things are property, and the only argument seems to be who has a right to use that property, and by what virtue he has that right.

There's also a bit of confusion about value and utility. A man who exists in isolation has great need of utility but none for value - he will consume what he produces and there is no-one else to trade with. In society, we often lose sight of the importance of utility and seek instead to create value to trade with others - on faith that someone, somewhere, has something that will provide utility that they will give in exchange. As such, a person can spend their lives making brandy or jewelry, trusting that someone else will make food and will be willing to trade for his product.

He strays into morality, particularly those who wish to ban or discourage certain industries (such as the production of alcohol or leisure goods) and suggests that the immorality belongs to the consumer rather than the producer. If no-one wished to consume these goods, there would be no profit in producing them. Close down the distilleries and men will make whisky in their barns.

And there's a long loop into the political realm, which again underscores the tendency of men to seek their own interests - if they do not gain any benefit from their labor, they will not be inclined to engage in labor. The communists belief in the social-minded individual who will labor for his neighbors while getting no benefit for himself does not correspond to reality, and certainly is not evident among those who propose such a scheme.

Property and ownership are evident in any society. When someone has a right to use something, or has the right to indicate who may use it, then he is exercising property rights. It may be declared that something is not owned and is available for anyone to use - but the moment two people have conflicting interests that require the use of a given item, it becomes clear that it is indeed property. The most sophisticated arguments of the "rabid partisans of public ownership" fail to overcome such a conflict.

There's a silly bit, likely a rebuttal to an even sillier argument, that it is in the nature of man to have individual needs, and he is thus assigned the individual responsibility to meet them. No man may eat or drink or breathe for another - and it is therefore the responsibility of each person to procure what is necessary for his individual survival. And if this is his responsibility, it follows that he has a right to own those things that he has procured or produced - he cannot survive without property.

(EN: This goes on for several dozen paragraphs more. It's politics rather than economics.)