[mikema63]

I want to make a quick outline of the major differences between modern capitalism and the catallactic economy of libertarian theories.

1) how do you come to own property?

Capitalism has no set rules for this, it has the flexibility to declare property to be so for whatever pragmatic reason it might have, from the owning of national parks to the declaration of ownership change in eminent domain. As such it cannot be described as having a theory of how you come to own property, except nominally.

Catallaxy draws heavily from lockean homesteading, you own yourself (a presupposition that not all accept but is integral to catallaxy), through yourself you own your labor, and when you mix your labor into a project you own it. There is no other way to own property except of course to trade your labor and it's products in exchange for the property of others.

2) what does ownership mean?

In capitalism, ownership means that you have total rights to the area or object in question excepting where the government (controlled mainly through capitalists) determines that it controlls an aspect in the name of preserving the system. Ownership entails no specific efforts on your part.

In catallaxy owning something means that you have the right not to be interfered with in that project, if you own a home having someone enter would be interference with your purpose of living there. However if you own a logging company and have a planted field of trees not immediately needed to log, if someone walks through it they are not interfering with your purpose and you cannot exclude them from this. You have control of only the specific part related to your labor and no rights to exclusion or control over any other projects in or on the area in question.

3) how do you continue to own property?

In capitalism you own property forever with no obligations required to continue ownership, except where capitalists collectively determine that losing said property is necessary for the continuation of the system.

In catallaxy since you own things only because you labor is in them your ownership is always tied to you maintaining the condition of having labor in it. Either by inputing your own labor or having labor freely sold to you. Depending on the property in question over a period of time you lose control over your property, such as an unused field or An unworked factory. This means that if laborers refuse to sell you their labor and you cannot replace them you will lose ownership. This results in the fact that unless you can offer a deal to the laborers that will ensure they will prefer to work for you and not themselves you will lose your property. The larger your holdings the more difficult it will be to maintain ownership. At a certain point when the size of the firm in question is large to the point where specialized workers that preform things that cannot be easily replaced, or they are irreplaceable, it will be nearly impossible to maintain sole ownership unless the value you produce is so enormous that you add massively to the incomes of all workers and add value to society at large.

Any questions or other aspects you would like me to go over.

[SolarCross]

Good yes, point 1, 2 and 3 show clear, even radical, differences with capitalism as it generally understood. This alone demonstrates the merits of having the set of principles represented by a different term than capitalism.

Catallaxy would seem to be a statement of natural property such that a hunter-gatherer type would have no difficulty accepting as true.

point 3. offers (at least in theory) the fascinating prospect that aggrieved workers could take control of the means of production not with violent conquest but by peaceful withdrawal.

Any socialist with a brain should like these principles it gives a lot to the working person. Big capitalists will hate it.

[mikema63]

This is also mixed with some of my own conclusions so I cannot claim that everyone will agree from within libertarianism. The third point is extremely important for obvious reasons and the first excludes some of the killing of natives that has gone on in the past, certainly some interesting divergences.

[mikema63]

I can't fix issues before I go on without more bouncing ideas, please provide for me.


Please?

[Nunt]

I have a bit of a problem with your idea about abanonment of property rights. It seems to me that you would consider property to be abondoned as way too soon. I don't think it should be the case that when factory workers strike for three weeks, that the factory owner looses ownership of the factory.

While I like the idea as property resulting from ongoing peaceful projects, I don't like the idea that property disappears as soon as the most obvious project (temporarily) stops. Even if the factory is no longer producing anything, it may still produce something in the near future or the owner may try to sell it. Personally I believe abondonment of property occurs when the owners do not maintain the property so that the original project no longer takes place. For example, a farmer may loose ownership of his field when nature has reclaimed the field and is no longer suited for agriculture. The same for factories: the owner looses property rights when the factory is in such bad state that nobody can conceivable produce anything in that state and he is no longer using it for any other project.

[SolarCross]

I can't fix issues before I go on without more bouncing ideas, please provide for me.

Please?

Maybe there are no issues to fix. I've read it several times, nothing leaps out. Thinking hard, all I have come up with so far is this:-

What about things you find? "Finder's keepers" - is finding a kind of mixing of labour to get ownership? What if you find something without realising someone else found it first or otherwise had a claim of ownership? Do intentions matter?

Other than that you might do a little more than state the differences between capitalism and catallaxy and justifiy the principles on some grounds be it ethical, pragmatic or whatever.

Just a thought but you might think about explicating and justifying catallaxy as a set of principles in its own right first and then, possibly in a separate document, contrasting it with other property concept systems such as capitalism, feudalism, socialism and so on.

As part of justifying it you might consider searching for some pre-existing systems closely resembling catallaxy in historical or anthropological sources. Warning heavy scholarship ahead.

[mikema63]

@nunt, you cannot conceivably run a factory without labor but it would rarely be a problem unless the factory owner was paying an unfairly low wage (otherwise if it was a fair wage he could find more workers and just fire the strikers) and he totally refused to raise the wage or make a fair deal at all.

@taxi, I'll have to think about about ethical principles as I'm drawing largely from locke in this, much of my liking from this is there is an actual justification for owning property through the chain of your own self ownership rather than just because the government has it on file somewhere that you own it.

I'm planning on a what is catallaxy post of course and later contrasting with other systems, gotta study other systems more closely though.

As for looking for historical examples.... That sounds unpleasant, there won't be much out there I imagine and I can't even imagine where to begin, maybe I should ask one of our resident history posters like TIG.

[Nunt]

@nunt, you cannot conceivably run a factory without labor but it would rarely be a problem unless the factory owner was paying an unfairly low wage (otherwise if it was a fair wage he could find more workers and just fire the strikers) and he totally refused to raise the wage or make a fair deal at all.

Why would that never be a problem? You just need a strong union in the factory that goes on strike for a few weeks and after that period they get a free factory. Seems very alluring for the workers of such a factory: "don't work for three weeks and win a multimillion factory". Even if the factory owner is paying very good wages, getting a free factory may still be a powerfull enough incentive to strike.

Therefore, I believe factory maintenance as a better standard. As long as the factory owners maintain the factory and not let it fall apart, they show that, while not producing anything in the factory at the moment, they are still planning to produce something there in the future, so the factory is still part of their ongoing projects.

I think if you follow your definition for abandonment, you would end up in some unwelcome scenarios. Image a family moves out of their house and cannot find a buyer straight away for their house. The house is abondoned so according to your rules, a new family just has to move in and they get a free house.

[SolarCross]

@nunt - it is better to leave these principles as just that, principles, rather than try to a priori decide how they should be precisely implemented otherwise you end up with something resembling legislation. A bloated and complicated rule book trying to cover every possible unique situation ad nauseam and inevitablely doing so poorly. Let the principles be crystallised into specifics in the field. For example the abandonment principle in a real life situation: -

A prospective home builder stumbles on a grassland field and thinks that would be nice place to build a home. He puts up a notice to signal his intent. A farmer in turn serves notice to him that the field is not abandoned but just laying fallow, last year he grew beets on it and next year he intends to grow cabbages in the meantime it is laying fallow. The home builder being a bit unreasonable chooses to dispute the farmers claim. So the community is summoned for a impromtu court to decide the matter. Witnesses attest that the farmer did indeed grow crops on the field the year before and expert witnesses in the form of other farmers attest that it is part of the normal business of farming to 'rest' a field every so many years. The court finds that the farmer didn't abandon the field and reaffirms his ownership.

Many years later - the prospective home builder swings by the area and sees the field still empty grassland. He makes some enquiries and finds that the no crops had been grown on the field since he last served notice. Thinking he now has a good case for claiming it abandoned he once again serves notice of his intention to build a home there. The farmer serves notice that the field is just laying fallow and that next year he will be growing some crops there. The home builder disputes this and another court is called. This time local witnesses attest the field hadn't been worked in many years and expert witnesses attest that it is not normal to leave a field unworked that long. The farmer can't come up with any credible reason to continue ownership and the court finds that the home builder is free to build a house there.

@mike - you might find there are more past and even present examples than you think. Don't restrict yourself to the city dwelling, literate, monument building civilisations based on mass agriculture that historians are biased towards. Also consider the property habits of the 'uncivilised' peoples such as the amazonians, samoyed, amerindians, polynesians, mongolians and so on.

[mikema63]

@nunt, if the deals are fair he would hire other people and fire the union workers, unions would not have the same governmentally granted powers they do today and would not be able to force collective bargaining or prevent the owner from hiring others.

@taxi, alright I'll try to look into it.

[Nunt]

@nunt, if the deals are fair he would hire other people and fire the union workers, unions would not have the same governmentally granted powers they do today and would not be able to force collective bargaining or prevent the owner from hiring others.

True but a factory can't hire 5000 new workers overnight. There is bound to be a transition period.

[SolarCross]

If anyone wanted to claim abandoment the owners would only have to show that they were looking for workers and continuing to pay the maintenance costs (electricty and so on) and they would have a cast-iron claim of continued interest in the project.

[Joe Liberty]

A fascinating thread. I haven't weighed in because I still don't know what I think about it. At first blush I don't like it, but I'm hard-pressed to find a concrete reason why, other than the general feeling that if I own a piece of land, I am the sole arbiter of its disposition: it's mine mine mine no matter what I do (or don't do) with it.

Much to think about, thanks mike.

[mikema63]

Thanks I try, as an important point you do have control over your project, you can sell it or do something else with it and exclude others from interfering with it, you just can't not use it, but you certainly don't get to be told what you will do with it.

[Happyhippo]

Mikema: Why aren`t you a mutualist? You seem to reject the, quite frankly idiotic and undefensible, property theory of american libertarians, and are already proposing different rules for transfer of land. The jump isn`t a particularly big one, but mutualist property theory will probably still seem alien at first.

It would be intersting to know what you have against free market anti-capitalism

[mikema63]

STV>LTV

I also do not consider paying for labor as a consequence, and while I'm not sure if mutuality also think this but I also don't consider labor inalienable. Unfortunately it not so easy for me to just jump in and find a nice ideological fit because of these views, I just don't think there is anything inherently special about the things you can do (labor) over value since value is a purely human conception that does not have objective meaning outside of that.

There is no inherent value in anything no matter what amount of labor is used to produce it or what use it might have to people if they do not subjectively want it.

[Joe Liberty]

STV>LTV

I also do not consider paying for labor as a consequence, and while I'm not sure if mutuality also think this but I also don't consider labor inalienable. Unfortunately it not so easy for me to just jump in and find a nice ideological fit because of these views, I just don't think there is anything inherently special about the things you can do (labor) over value since value is a purely human conception that does not have objective meaning outside of that.

There is no inherent value in anything no matter what amount of labor is used to produce it or what use it might have to people if they do not subjectively want it.

Thinking out loud here: I agree with you that value is subjective. I'm also wondering if "improvement" isn't subjective. For instance: if I own a plot of land that I don't do anything with, couldn't I say that's an improvement over someone who might use it for a dump? Perhaps I value a natural environment, and choose to allow my lot to remain unimproved for that reason. Who gets to come along and tell me my value system is messed up? I think that might be at the root of my knee-jerk objection to this, the apparent fact that somebody else can decide for me what is a proper use of my property.

(If these are stupid questions, forgive me, catallactics is a new concept to me.)

[mikema63]

Actually operating a wildlife refuge is actually quite labor intensive so you could always point to that work.

There is also always the option to operate it as a park similarly to the national parks which itself creates a lot of labor.

The labor for refuges I refer to is maintaining travel paths, controlling the environment to remain optimum, checking on the water, checking and tracking your endangered species, etc.

[quetzalcoatl]

What about intellectual property rights? Does your right of ownership extend to only physically real objects like land or factories? Can I own a painting I never look at and refuse to let anyone else look at?

Do the participants in a project own the project, or is that a contingent matter of negotiation?

Can an artificial or person (corporation) own something? Conversely, can real persons collectively own such an artificial person (through shareholder or partnership arrangements)?

If I am making mortgage payments on a house, in what (if any) sense do I own it? If I decide to work in Singapore for a year, do I still own the house? Can I own a house I don't live in, don't rent out, and never intend to do either? Are squatters entitled to adversely occupy abandoned foreclosed homes? What actions does a mortgage holder need to take to establish ownership of a foreclosed property?

Who has the right to evict? (A current example is Orange County sheriff deputies evicting a cancer patient from her home, even though the patient had an order from a federal judge ordering no eviction to proceed). Who has the legal right to judge property disputes, and do legal rights even exist?

[mikema63]

1) no, intellectual works can be used by someone else without impeding your use of them so no to IP, as for the painting I can't imagine why it would occur but no I suppose he wouldn't own the painting itself.

2) the participants in a project don't have to own it, however if they are skilled and cannot be easily replaced it is likely they would become partners in the project so that the original owner doesn't have them simply strike and homestead the project.

3) artificial people cannot labor. Real people can own an organization through shares but they would be subject to loss if the factory didn't run, their continued ownership relies heavily on labor feeling like they are in a better position than otherwise and shareholder profits may be somewhat lower reflecting that.

4) a mortgage is a loan from the bank and you buy the house so you own the house but you are certainly in debt, the only difference is that the bank cannot reposes the house. You still owe though (I won't go into some of the differences in contract law but they would require informed consent, hiding something in the fine print or over complicating the document is grounds for fraud). Houses would have a longer time frame till you lose ownership, but if it's a year then you had better rent it out. Yes squatters can occupy unused property, which would also count as homesteading it which would make it theirs.

5) a lex mercatoria style arbitration system for contract disputes and property disputes, no one has the right to evict you unless you, with informed consent, give that right to a creditor if you reneg on a debt.