@customdesigned thank you - execellent explainer. I'd also add that there is a general awareness of problems that affect everyone, and must be solved collectively or "the costs are socialized" roads are a very good example. Occasionally, you do get a toll road or bridge, but for the most part, governments just builds roads and pays for them with taxes, and even if you do not drive on them your self.

The point is that "property" is socially constructed, by the state or otherwise. Any society has a range of practices about how resources are allocated, no one really has a "just take anything" policy, or maybe for somethings but not others.

I don't think there is anything that must be solved socially, like, it doesn't really matter how the resource is allocated, as long as it's available when needed. I chose roads as an example because the need for roads seems uncontroversial. There are some roads provided by user taxes, but are they entirely funded that way?

indeed bicycles don't pay road tax - but the thing with tax, is you need to some how make an arbitary decision about who pays what tax and how it's enforced. It's just hard to tax bicycles because they don't need anything, and generally bicycles arn't registered, etc.

Roads are also very different to say, resturants, because there are not multiple parallel roads that compete.

@customdesigned This is the first I have heard of roads such as this! clearly this becomes more viable with transponder technology. I can think of one toll road in NZ and a bridge (but they are government projects). It will be interesting to see how this develops.

I would acknowledge a spectrum of "property" at the extreme right is maybe absolute monarchy, and at the extreme left is possessions. Like, your clothing. It's yours because you have it. If you pick up a rock it's now your possession. There are many layers inbetween those two extremes, like, I have a bicycle, and I think of my self as "owning" it, but the state doesn't know (or care to be honest) that I own the bike. It continues to be in my possession only because I have chained it up. A car, however, is protected by paperwork. since it's mobile like a bicycle, it's easy to steal a car, but it's not easy to sell the car because of the paperwork. If you brought a stolen car, and get caught with it it's a big problem. There are other ways around this for thiefs though, like steal whole cars and sell them as parts. This works particularily well for motorcycles as they are small, and the parts are expensive.

In Japan, they actually have a paperwork registration system for bicycles and you are in trouble if you have an unregistered bicycle, I'm not sure if I'd prefer that.

The nice thing about possessions, is that it disincentivises accumulating many of them. I couldn't sensibly protect 100 bicyles, so I only have how many I need.

But state enforcement of property makes owning many many things feasible (note: enforcement is theirfore a social good from a many-property owner's perspective) this tends to mean that relatively few people end up owning almost everything, and everyone else scrambling for the scraps, rather than everyone possessing what they need.

In different ages and places, different forms of things can be property. Currently, it's possible to own certain forms of ideas, previously you could own other people. The idea of owning land is widespread, but there are often restrictions as to what you are legally entitled to do with it. But it hasn't always been this way -- maybe you'd own family's hut, but the land belongs to the whole tribe. The point being, property is constructed, not natural.

@CustomDesigned

So personal property would not be considered Evil™ "private property"?

i think so! i claim "personal ownership" of my computer, because i am the primary caretaker of my computer and am also willing to share my productive outputs with my community. i'd like to claim "personal ownership" of my room in my flat, for the same reasons, but the State will protect my landlord's "personal exclusive ownership from a remote distance that is held for eternity" using force.

we do need people to be the Kaitiaki ("guardians" / "stewards" / "caretakers" / "maintainers") of our natural resources. but it's "evil" when those who provide care for the resources are restricted by force to lose the fruits of their labor.

1) centralized (accumulated wealth of many men's labor)

it helped my understanding when i learned that centralization happens on many dimensions: resources, information, and control.

for example: it's possible to distribute resources (philanthropy) while still centralizing information (trade secrets) and control (patents).

2) protected by government backed by an army

i'd change this to be "protected by anyone other the current caretakers".

i also learned from @josh how the Bible says: every 50 years is a jubilee, cancel any debts with anyone else and return all your personal property to the original people who owned them. - Leviticus 25:8-50

‘You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven sabbaths of years, namely, forty-nine years

‘You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family.

‘The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me. ‘Thus for every piece of your property, you are to provide for the redemption of the land.

‘If a fellow countryman of yours becomes so poor he has to sell part of his property, then his nearest kinsman is to come and buy back what his relative has sold. ‘Or in case a man has no kinsman, but so recovers his means as to find sufficient for its redemption, then he shall calculate the years since its sale and refund the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and so return to his property. ‘But if he has not found sufficient means to get it back for himself, then what he has sold shall remain in the hands of its purchaser until the year of jubilee; but at the jubilee it shall revert, that he may return to his property.

‘Now in case a countryman of yours becomes poor and his means with regard to you falter, then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you. ‘Do not take usurious interest from him, but revere your God, that your countryman may live with you.

Haha, but the government needs to tax you to fund the enforcement of the property system. It's called a protection racket!

@customdesigned that's known as the "state theory of money" or Chartalism

Basic Idea: The state creates money and then demands taxes are paid in it. So to avoid punishment, you have to trade for money, then pay some of that to the state.

There are of course, multiple theories of money I think the best way to be wrong about this is to say one is true and the rest are false. I think they all explain aspects, you can have a state money (most national currencies) along side commodity money (gold) etc