Re: Historical comparisons

On 19 Mar 2006 08:54:10 -0800, "William Mook"
<william.mook@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I know you've stated that there's no way natural resources can become
property Roy. Its just that I disagree with your contention, despite
your appeals to authority!.

You are either willing to know the difference between rightful
property in products of labor and wrongful violation of others'
rights, or you're not.

And so does everyone else afaict!

Wrong. I could cite you dozens of eminent people agreeing with me.

"Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed
poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended
as to violate natural right."
-- Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to James Madison), 1785

"While it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of
property is derived from Nature at all ... it is considered by those
who have seriously considered the subject, that no one has, of natural
right, a separate property in an acre of land ... Stable ownership is
the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society."
-- Thomas Jefferson

If a coal seam exists underground and no one knows its there, or how to
get at it, or what its good for even if they did get at it - then
people are not enriched by claiming the coal seam on behalf of humanity

Yes, they are, because that makes it freely available for use once
discovered. Whereas its private appropriation unquestionably
impoverishes humanity.

Now, if people come along lets call them Bessemer and Watt - and they
invent new things that require coal for their production, and if
others as a result come along after and figure out efficient ways to
produce and process coal to feed the processes invented by Bessemer and
Watt - lets call them Carnegie - then, they have done something to
enrich humanity using this coal resource that previously contributed
nothing to the human condition.

But nothing in what they have done in any way requires that they be
given a property right in all the world's unmined coal.

Plainly, Bessemer, Watt and Carnegie became very wealthy. But that
wealth DID NOT come at the expense of humanity. Humanity was enriched
by their efforts.

That is a bait-and-switch. Humanity was enriched by their _efforts_,
but not by any privileges whereby they became wealthy.

That's because creating uses for coal and creating
methods of extracting and processing coal are CREATIVE PROCESSES - that
just happen to have part of their value associated with a natural
resource.

None of their value is associated with a natural resource.

Natural resources have no intrinsic value unless and until someone
creates a use for that resource and a method for extracting and
processing and bringing that resource usefully to market.

There is no such thing as intrinsic value in any case. And the notion
that inventing a use for a resource makes all of that resource that
exists in the world the inventor's property is plainly just stupid.
As well as evil.

-- Roy L
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Historical comparisons
    ... your appeals to authority!. ... out a way to make useful products out of it for the rest of humanity ... Since Roy will likely bitch that I'm misreading Jefferson, ... enrich humanity using this coal resource that previously contributed ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: Historical comparisons
    ... your appeals to authority!. ... out a way to make useful products out of it for the rest of humanity ... Since Roy will likely bitch that I'm misreading Jefferson, ... enrich humanity using this coal resource that previously contributed ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: Historical comparisons
    ... I know you've stated that there's no way natural resources can become ... people are not enriched by claiming the coal seam on behalf of humanity ... if people come along lets call them Bessemer and Watt - and they ... enrich humanity using this coal resource that previously contributed ...
    (sci.space.policy)