RE: OWNERSHIP: Toward a Social Credit "Labor Theory of Property"??

[John Médaille <john@medaille.com>]

At 01:52 PM 7/3/2005 -0400, Ed Dodson wrote:
>Ed Dodson responding...
>Bill Ryan wrote:
>
>JOHN MEDAILLE: ...there are only two theories of title to property in
>land: that title is from labor or from violence.
>
>
>BILL RYAN: Wait a minute, the Adam and Eve story is perfectly
>applicable to the world that modern man emerged into
>at the end of the last Ice Age--a world of plenty for
>everyone.  One could merely stake out a farm in the
>Nile or Tigris valleys, and begin farming it, without
>taking anything from anybody.
>
>So that makes a third theory, doesn't it?
>-
>Ed Dodson here:
>Yes. I think is equates to what I responded a few moments ago to John as
>rights from "discovery or first occupancy."
>
>The one observation about the early settlements is that "rent" had not yet
>arisen because there was ample land of equal potential productivity to
>settle on and exploit. That happy situation eventually disappears; and, at
>some point, the "freely accessible" land will no longer yield even
>subsistence (given the knowledge level of the day and existing capital
>goods).

If this were true, one would expect to see "private property" as a 
characteristic of the most primitive societies. In fact, it never us. Land 
for tribal peoples is communal, with the family appropriating to itself 
only what it can work and only for as long as the family endures. There is 
no notion of capital gains in the sale of property, and any such sale is 
always a communal matter rather than a private one. private property is 
always a feature of advanced societies where wealth is concentrated rather 
than communal.

Nor has land disappeared or become such that it will not yield subsistence. 
In fact, the world is awash in food and productivity has far outstripped 
population. Land is no longer equally accessible, because of legal 
arrangements, not because of natural ones.




John C. Médaille

"A dead thing can go with the stream...
but only a living thing can go against it."
         -G. K. Chesterton
http://www.medaille.com/distributivism.htm
john@medaille.com

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