Re: Property

Dick.Gray@bull.com
Tue, 15 Dec 1998 11:44:31 -0700

I wrote:
>Ok. So can you answer my questions? I'd like to know just wherein you
think
>the wrong lies in appropriating an unowned resource. It might help me to
>understand your position, which, frankly, seems incoherent so far.

Samael returned:
>You are depriving somebody of something.

How is that? How can I deprive somebody of something he doesn't have?

>The grazing land they were using now has a fence around it.
>They can't dig up coal themselves, as some bugger hgot their fuirst, has
put
>a fence and is digging it all up and selling it off, not letting anyone
else
>do so themselves.

Why can't they rent mining rights from the "bugger"? You're assuming that the bugger somehow posesses everything of value, and "they" have nothing. Why?

>They can't live on spot X as someone else has cordoned it off, built a
city
>block on it and demands to be paid to live there.

How do you propose that land be fairly allocated in the absense of property rights? By drawing lots? By the whim of some "authority"?

Dick