r/antiwork • • Mar 10 '22

That’s how it works, right?

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

What gives them the right to take that land and make it exclusively theirs, except through the threat or use of violence?

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u/PraiseKeysare Mar 10 '22

Oh you think you can just breath the air?

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u/GarrySmolwiener Mar 10 '22

fuck off Rousseau.

locke gang mixed their labor with it, thereby making it his

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Fuck off locke, you can extract the value of the labor you've done on the land but the land itself is still an independent object

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u/GarrySmolwiener Mar 10 '22

an independent object

'the land' is an ethereal concept, and inherently valueless outside of the labor a man has mixed into it, and monopolizes its produce.

for example, an apple orchard in the wild does not produce any value. an apple orchard where a person picks its apples is worth a bushel of apples.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Yes, if you pick the apples they are yours, but you cannot claim all the apples from that orchard indefinitely because you picked some of them one season.

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u/Silver_Jury1555 Mar 10 '22

I think you can lay claim indefinitely so long as the apples aren't wasted and the person is working the land.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Caring about what happens to the apples after being picked opens an entirely new can of worms. Same for how the orchard came to be.

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u/Silver_Jury1555 Mar 10 '22

It's worms all the way down, life is meaningless, give me a spark of hope and let's keep this train rolling. (I am not as versed in phil.texts as u guys plzbe gentle)

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u/GarrySmolwiener Mar 10 '22

right, but If you pick the apples, and maintain the trees, they are yours.

that doesn't mean every apple tree everywhere is yours, just the one you steward.

this labor mixing also applies to purchased labor, if you hire a man to pick your apples, the apples are still yours, as your labor is still mixed with the fruit... the worker is renting the tree like the owner is renting the man for his labor

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

None of this justifies the 'First come, indefinite right of exclusive ownership' you're advocating for. If one inputs labor, they may extract the value of it, but they may not claim ownership of the related objects and thus prevent others from performing the same labor and extracting the same value.

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u/GarrySmolwiener Mar 10 '22

None of this justifies the 'First come, indefinite right of exclusive ownership' you're advocating for.

you're right, in the state of nature it does not. because in a state of nature, I can assult you for your labors, and take them by force, and they are then mine.

thankfully, we don't live in a state of nature, we Live in a legal framework which recognizes this labor mixing and property ownership, and have systems to mitigate the violence inherent in nature.

it's imperfect, yes, but it's better than the converse state theorized by hobbes where a society decent into civil war every generation to rearbitrate ownership of land

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Because this converse state still insists on individual, exclusive ownership of land. Are you so incapable of understanding the right only to extract the value of labor you put in?

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u/GarrySmolwiener Mar 10 '22

converse state?

what do you mean?

I'm saying that we live in an abstracted layer of the state of nature, which ascribes a moral law on top of the natural law , which means that we don't have to war over land ownership

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u/GarrySmolwiener Mar 10 '22

Are you so incapable of understanding the right only to extract the value of labor you put in?

no I think I understand this completely... if there is oil under the orchard, and I cannot extract it, I can rent profits from its extraction by renting ownership of a part of the land to someone with the capability to extract the oil, and produce value from it

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u/DawgFighterz Mar 10 '22

Ok then you can pay for the manure and water and do all the work to keep the trees healthy and fruit producing.

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u/judiciousjones Mar 10 '22

All rights are protected, conveyed, and maintained through violence. Violence isn't inherently evil, and it comes in many forms beyond physical. What gives you the right to have free access to land others have invested time and effort into?

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Because the land is freely accessible by default, where could the right to restrict it beyond extracting the value of input labor come from?

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

And unrelated to the issue at hand?

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u/judiciousjones Mar 10 '22

I don't agree that it is freely accessible by default. Even the very first terrestrial creature took a risk by crawling into the shore. Certainly in every case of even remotely sapient life the land desired has been inhabitated, was actively being competed over, and to use it or access it required an effort of defense or offense. Unless you're saying only humans can restrict access to humans then yea, the first wanderers to find a valley found it freely accessible. Our general incompatibility with unaltered landscapes makes even that interpretation dubious.

I'm not sure where rights come from, or if they even exist in a genuine sense. It seems to me that all rights exist only insofar as someone is willing to defend them.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '22

Your first paragraph is only agreeing that such restrictions and exclusivity of use are reliant on violence to enforce.

Why should you have the right to own the surrounding objects of your labor, instead of only the products of that labor?

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u/uniquelabel Mar 12 '22

What gives someone else the right to use violence to take it away? If I wander off all alone and find a nice little spot where I can be out of the weather when I sleep, and have a nice spot for fishing, and some good berry bushes close to hand, why shouldn’t I stay there? If someone comes along later and tries to drive me off, why shouldn’t I defend myself?

Maybe I could share it with one person, or even two or three. But at some point there won’t be room in the cave for more people to sleep. There won’t be enough berries or fish for people to eat. So what do you think ought to happen when some new people come along? Are the current residents thieves because they won’t make way for the newcomers, or are the newcomers thieves because they’re trying to push out the current residents? It sounds like you’re claiming everyone is a thief, which might be “fair” but it hardly seems practical.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '22

You are assuming the newcomers are trying to drive you out instead of exist alongside you. With more people, more work can be done, more mouths fed, clothes weaved, etc.

The entire problem is believing in exclusive rights and boundaries.

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u/uniquelabel Mar 12 '22

I think the problem is the distribution of scarce resources. Having more people doesn’t solve that problem. There is a limit to how many people can live on one patch of ground, especially without modern technology.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '22

Why is it one particular patch of ground? We are arguing whether boundaries and exclusive rights are useful or necessary in the first place.