Saturday, January 23, 2010
Property as basis for Government in Locke
Ownership plays a central role in Locke's Second Treatise of Government because, Locke argues, it is a desideratum of any justifiable system of government that it respect people's property. This seems fair enough, though it places a heavy burden on what property is, where it comes from, and whether it can be justified. Thus we will read the entire Second Treatise (it is quite short), but our main focus will be on the even more compressed account he gives of the nature of property -- or rather on the several accounts that seem more or less loosely braided together in his treatment. One of our main tasks will be to attempt to tease apart these threads and understand them, both separately and together.
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7 comments:
i have no foundation for what constitutes ownership of property, personally. i am inclined to find it arbitrary and therefore respect the laws in place (nearly intentionally blindly in the face of antimony) yet my problem is that on my daily drive on the back roads from pittsfield to adams, there is a lot of beautiful farm land and wood land that i would love to explore and picnic in, but every other tree has a no trespassing sign on it. i couldn't help feeling like a criminal for enjoying the landscape for it's natural beauty, even when i have never seen the owners enjoy it themselves...
I have to agree with Brendon on the subject of land ownership like that. It's kind of ridiculous to have someone say, "I own all these woods, if you are caught in them, you will be legally prosecuted." It seems like the kind of thing that couldn't really be considered "property." I can, however, understand the idea of owning a small piece of land like a suburban house with a yard; that's more personal privacy and comfortable living space than owning several acres of untouched forest just for the sake of owning it. A lot of it is just for the money, with people owning land just so they can sell it to potential developers; they don't want trespassers to "spoil" the land. Sometimes it's just because whomever owns the land inherited it or got rights to it when they bought their house.
Either way, I think it's kind of unfair in a lot of cases to lay claim to huge chunks of land and make it a punishable offense if people step foot there. For example, there is a part of the Greylock glen that myself and my family went hiking in a few times when I was much younger. Now, Specialty Minerals bought the land and put up "No Trespassing" signs all around it, which is a shame because it's a very scenic part of the forest. They aren't using the forest there for anything, and it's far away from their blasting site, so there seems to be no real reason for them owning it. Yet if you walk through there, you could get penalized for it. Granted, the odds of you actually getting caught wandering in a remote expanse of forest are extremely small. In which case, it doesn't make much sense to make it illegal to be there.
RisingDragon11, What for you is the difference between owning a small piece of land and owning a larger one? I mean to ask what constitutes ownership in your view? Take the smaller property, the house, what if I were not going to use that house? What if I just brought the house because it was a good buying market and planned to resell it when its was a seller's market? I guess what I'm getting at is that is if there is something that you are trying to say about the amount of usage that a property gets, or if its simply about the size?
I was actually referring to a person actually living in/using a small piece of land. For example, I personally would not like it if people could come into my back yard at any time and do anything they wanted there while I was living in the house on that property.
However, if I were not using the land at all, then I wouldn't care if anybody used it.
In regards to my previous comment, I was saying that I think it's justifiable for people to own a small piece of land (i.e. a suburban home/yard) and be guaranteed privacy rights against trespassers if they're actually living there, but that it's questionable when they live in a small house on a huge tract of land that they "own" and enforce privacy rights on said land.
I think the same holds true for any plot of land, large or small, that people have ownership rights to but are not using and do not plan on using; it's kind of ridiculous to say "You can't walk in these woods because they're legally mine and that's that, even though I'm not using the woods for anything or living there," just as it would be ridiculous to say the same for an abandoned house/yard.
The meaning of property has changed as the means to acquire land have changed. In other words, the definition of property for the caveman did not incorporate the current legal stipulations of ownership. The caveman simply stumbled upon land and deemed it their own.
On the other hand, the modern man faces far different requirements to obtain land e.g. good credit, stable income, financial discipline etc. . . Such requirements necessitate a different mode of survival for the modern man.
For instance, cavemen needed the bare essentials (i.e. food, tools, shelter), the knowledge to obtain them and use them on their own. The modern man has all the "bare essentials" at their disposal. Most people do not need to know how to hunt or build shelter because money is the primary means to acquire forms of property.
Essentially, money is now a "bare essential." Perhaps the decline in agricultural knowledge and the emergence of an economy are the reasons for the enhanced distance between man and nature? It is no longer a question of "How can we eat?" or "How can we stay warm?" Instead, it is a question of "How can we get paid (so I don't have to do it myself?)." This leads me to think people have lost a certain degree of self-sufficiency; or maybe a new form of self-sufficiency has emerged with respect to the global economic context.
It is perfectly fair to say that the principle vehicles of property evolves over time (as Locke acknowledges with respect to land in his own time), but it seems doubtful to claim that the meaning of property as such changes...
I agree; the definition hasn't changed. The meaning of property remains the same. It is obvious after reading Locke that "property" is not simply, "the ownership of land." Property must legitimately be tended to for the sake of self-preservation and the common good.
After class on Wednesday, I realized the ownership of property requires labor. In fact, the amount of labor put forth ought to be proportional to the amount of property. Locke even claims the proper amount of labor will make nine acres of land equivalent to ninety acres of land.
This circumstance promotes conservation and it creates a greater opportunity for other people to obtain land. In short, the legitimate care of property will preserve its owners and open up possibilities for other people.
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