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From: flink@umcp-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: belated reply--rent control & property
Message-ID: <7262@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-May-84 16:59:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.7262
Posted: Fri May 25 16:59:16 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Jun-84 04:13:40 EDT
Organization: Univ. of Maryland, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 23

Understatement of the week, by Ray Simard:

>>	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?

Larry Kolodney was right to point out that physical property is not created
by anyone; thus the Right is going to have a hard time explaining why anyone
has a right to it.  And if nobody had a right to it in the beginning, then
nobody has gotten a right to it by paying money to somebody who claimed to
have a right to it!  The whole libertarian argument about property rights
flounders on this point:  at least part of the value of any object is due
to the (non-humanly-created) raw materials in it, so nobody could ever
"earn" a property right to it.

Property rights are at best a convenient legal fiction, with tenuous ethical
basis.  I favor efficient economies, but as far as I'm concerned, the hard-
line free marketeers can go soak their heads.

			The aspiring iconoclast is back!