[Truth To Power]

Who came up with the concept of private property TTP?

It doesn't matter who. What matters is why.

Most early humans had no concept of private property and private land.

Two very different things.

In fact, many lands are communally owned in many tribal societies. You own your toothbrush and some clothes and that is it. Homes, land and water, plants and everything else is communal stuff.

No. Like toothbrushes and clothes, homes are created by labor, and thus inherently private.

The English had a very long history of private land ownership.

Private ownership of land in the modern sense only dates to Roman times. The English had their commons until a few centuries ago.

That was not universal with many Native American societies.

Private landowning was inconceivable to many pre-agricultural societies.

Roman law, for public and private prop. rights:

Yes, well, the Romans had a numeration system, too. One very inferior to the modern one. Just because a law was Roman, and written in Latin, doesn't make it correct. Rome did accomplish some amazing things, but reverence for Roman institutions is based on the dominance of Roman Catholicism in Europe, not any objective merit thereof.

A guy here talking about the differences between private individual property and Bourgeois property...

A Marxist know-nothing.

That these concepts of what property means is controversial in many scholarly analysis and with Marx and with the Locke folks and the English Common Law stuff. And then you got Roman concepts. You got Native American concepts of thinking like the Hopi....and many others.

There are various interpretations of property rights, some valid, some not. To sort them out, we have to begin with first principles. That's what I have done.

Land is alive and is a living thing.

No it isn't. And even if it were, that is irrelevant to its status as property. Livestock is also alive.

Therefore you can't OWN it.

That is a bald non sequitur fallacy. A dog or chicken is a living thing, and you can certainly own it.

That is for crazy ass people who think something that is alive and breathes, moves and which all humans depend on for life....can't be owned.

What qualities are relevant to property rights?

You belong to the Earth and the Earth does not belong to you.

I don't belong to the earth, which is incapable of owning anything.

Only crazy folk believe they dominate something vastly more powerful than you are.

Like a mahout dominates an elephant...?

So all your gymnastics here Truth to Power is about concepts that no one really agrees universally on.

I agree there is not universal agreement. Just as before Newton, there was no universal agreement about what force, energy, weight, etc. were. But clear, valid definitions can clear that up, just as they cleared up the science of mechanics.

People live according to their circumstances. How do people survive in wage systems? Trading their labor for the wage to pay for their survival. Inherently imbalanced in power.

No, what is inherently imbalanced in power is forcible, uncompensated removal of people's rights to liberty and their conversion into the private property of the privileged.

[Tainari88]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig&ab_channel=RepresentUs

That summation is awesome there!
The reason the working class can not get represented and their interests taken care of.

They are going to wait for anger and violence if they don't change that fucked up reality on the hill.

Congress is the branch of government most reflective of the 'people's will' so imagine how bad the executive and judicial branch is at this time? It is bad....to the bone.

@Rancid and @Truth To Power and @Rich I got to go to work in a little bit. I will have time later tonight to answer some of your posts eh?

But if you are in Europe or in the East Coast of the USA I probably will be too late for your responses until tomorrow. I hope you are patient.

Meanwhile the American Dream for working people is looking pretty bad.

Here is a video:

[Rancid]

Serious question:

What do you guys think about what has happened recently with tech layoffs and the reaction to it from the rest of the working class? For example, I see on LinkedIN, lots of non-tech workers loving that fact that thousands of tech workers have been laid off. Is that healthy? Is it healthy for one segment of workers to basically want another segment of workers to be hurt?

Interesting dynamic I see.

Anyway, anyone in the industry could see the tech layoffs from a mile away. There is this weird perception that tech is a super safe field of work. IN reality, it has ALWAYS been one of the most volatile. Mass layoffs in tech are nothing knew, but yet, it seems like the general population never believed that (at least until now).

[Fasces]

Crab bucket mentality. It's the result of lack of working class solidarity and the destruction of the US labor movement.

[Truth To Power]

There will always be rich and poor, and there will always be privilege.

GARBAGE. There was never privilege before there was law. Privilege is created by law, and it can be eliminated by law.

The best that can be done is to ensure that working people are paid enough (enough to afford shelter, and food, save a little bit, have some time off, and have transportation to work, as well as ensure they have opportunities to get a good education and learn valuable skills to get paid better in the future) and have the opportunity to move up the socioeconomic ladder.

GARBAGE. The best that can be done is to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. Leaving the injustice of privilege undisturbed will never be the best that can be done.

There is no way to eliminate rich and poor or privilege. It will always exist.

GARBAGE. There was no privilege before law, and laws can be changed to remove privilege. And depending on how you define "poor" it is certainly possible to ensure that no one is poor. Some European countries have already done so.

Such is the reality of human nature that no political or economic system can do away with.

GARBAGE. The poverty, privilege and injustice that have been created by our institutions can be eliminated by reforms to those institutions.

There will never be a utopia or perfection.

Strawman fallacy. Just because we can't achieve perfection doesn't mean we can't do a lot better.

There will be "good enough," though.

Privilege and injustice may be good enough for the privileged, but not for those who care more for liberty, justice, and truth than they care for their own narrow financial interests.

[Truth To Power]

Crab bucket mentality. It's the result of lack of working class solidarity and the destruction of the US labor movement.

Nonsense. It's the result of the massive, systematic, institutionalized, and wholly gratuitous injustice of privilege. When people see that the only way to defend themselves against legalized theft by the privileged is to make themselves its beneficiaries by participating in it, there is nothing left for them to do but choose between staying stuck on (or falling off the back of) the treadmill, or trying their best to scramble up onto the escalator it powers. That's the real class divide, not working class vs owning class.

[Politics_Observer]

@Truth To Power

GARBAGE. There was never privilege before there was law. Privilege is created by law, and it can be eliminated by law.

NOT GARBAGE. It is POWER that creates privilege and law. Law merely serves to ensure continued power and privilege. An example would be white European settlers in North America, Australia, and Africa. Through their power of technology, they ensured their privilege, and through that privilege, they structured law to ensure their continued power and privilege in such places in the future.

This, of course, came at the expense of the natives. Only through the power of knowledge and education can the law and who has privileges and rights in the law be changed. Moreover, it is only through the power of education and knowledge can good governance and good policy be instituted.

[Truth To Power]

NOT GARBAGE.

Yes, garbage.

It is POWER that creates privilege and law.

Law can create privilege but also remove it. Power both creates and is conferred by law.

Law merely serves to ensure continued power and privilege.

Nope. Law can confer or remove both power and privilege, as you admit below.

An example would be white European settlers in North America, Australia, and Africa. Through their power of technology, they ensured their privilege, and through that privilege, they structured law to ensure their continued power and privilege in such places in the future.

No. Their power enabled them to create laws that granted them privileges. Privilege comes from law, not the other way around.

This, of course, came at the expense of the natives.

It was at the expense of everyone but the privileged.

Only through the power of knowledge and education can the law and who has privileges and rights in the law be changed.

Proving your claim, above, is false.

Moreover, it is only through the power of education and knowledge can good governance and good policy be instituted.

Hence my efforts here.