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From: lkk@mit-eddie.UUCP (Larry Kolodney)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Property rights, rent control, et. al.
Message-ID: <1867@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-May-84 11:09:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.1867
Posted: Fri May 18 11:09:20 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 19-May-84 06:59:08 EDT
References: <140@oliven.UUCP>, <3268@fortune.UUCP> <129@loral.UUCP>, <1863@mit-eddie.UUCP> <145@loral.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 33

From: simard@loral.UUCP:
>This raises a ticklish question: "If I am buying a piece of land from
>someone who bought it from someone, who...".  Extended back throught history,
>where does the chain begin?  Who owned that property in the first place, to
>sell it to anyone?  Whatever the resolution, it is now, properly or otherwise,
>necessary to exchange produced wealth, or its proxy, money, for the right
>to control a piece of land.  Were it not so, then by what right could you
>exclude me from entering your front door and setting up housekeeping,
>gratis, in your place of residence?  After all, your rent payments are to
>someone with no right to control that property, therefore...
>
>If land is, as your letter seems to imply, something that cannot be owned,
>then why the dickens do I send a check to a mortgage company every month?
>If you can convince them that the land my home occupies is "common heritage"
>and that I should be excused from making that monthly payment, I would
>be extraordinarily grateful.


The point to be made is that you have no inalienable right to property.  What 
property you do have is largely an accident of history.  (If you read
Fortune's list of the 400 richest people in Amerika, you'll find that
most of them inherited it.)  However, land
has to be allocated in some fashion, so we allocate it through the
fiction that people actually have the right to own it.  This is just one
way of allocating it.  There is nothing sacred about it, and if society
sees fit to make that right contingent on certain behaviors, there is
nothing sacriligious about that.
-- 
Larry Kolodney
(The Devil's Advocate)

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