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From: js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: The origin of ownership--THE libertarian stand
Message-ID: <795@mhuxt.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Apr-85 13:40:09 EST
Article-I.D.: mhuxt.795
Posted: Wed Apr 17 13:40:09 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Apr-85 04:54:14 EST
References: <886@wucs.UUCP> <1216@topaz.ARPA>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 32

> Suppose someone appropriated your body while you were sleeping
> (and thus not making use of it).

    I don't know about *you*, but even when I'm sleeping, I use my
body to breath, etc.  In fact, since the word 'body' includes my
brain, my body *is* me.  
    I wish I had a copy of the origional article here, but I think
the theory being discussed allowed the 'appropriation' only of unused
*and* unowned property.  If I own a piece of property by virtue of using
it, my claim lapses when I cease using it. If on the other hand, I own
it because I paid everyone else in society not to use that property, my
claim to that property continues whether I use it or not.  I can also
own something because I manufactured it out of abundant materials; in
this case too, my ownership does not cease when I cease to use it.  In the case
of my body, it was origionally manufactured out of things my parents
purchased; it was given to me by my parents, and I have used only things
which I have purchased (food) and abundant things (air, water) to
improve it since then.  It is *not* unowned property, and my ownership
of it is unaffected by whether I use it or not.
> 
> I disagree with the derivation of property rights from non-agression
> principles (even though it is quite logically consistent);  the
> example above may help to show why.  

   It doesn't.  In fact, the example above is completely at odds with the
theory of property rights which has been presented.
> 
> --JoSH
-- 
Jeff Sonntag
ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j
    "I never met a man I didn't like."- M. Trudeau