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June 7, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
36:32
2159 The Philosophy of Property

Some explanations of the theory and practice of private property, by Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio.

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Alright, property A to Z from StephBot of FreeDomainRadio.com.
So, some questions were asked on the FreeDomainRadio message board.
Some great questions recently.
About property.
And most fundamentally, it was a question of homesteading.
And as you may or may not know, I have this theory of ethics called universally preferable behavior, which says that an ethical action that cannot be achieved by, you know, in the laboratory setting, two guys in a single room, cannot be an ethical action, right?
So since...
Two men cannot both steal from each other because stealing is the unwilling relinquishing of property under threat of force or fraud or secrecy.
Two guys can't steal from each other because if stealing is a virtue then you want to be stolen from in which case it's not stealing but rather charity or lending.
And so somebody had a great question which was how can two guys homestead a piece of property and And if they can't both homestead the same piece of property in the same room at the same time, then how can it be moral to homestead property?
And if property rights falls apart, then pretty much the major ethical systems of mankind fall apart as well, including mine.
So, a fine and stirring challenge.
I have spent the morning sharpening my blade, doing a little light stretching, and we shall try and see what middle-aged, bald-ass ninja moves I can pull on this really, really great criticism.
But first, let's have a look at property as a whole.
I want to look at property as a whole, and then we can delve into the details of homesteading, and then we can talk about this particular instance.
So, my argument is, of course, that property rights all derive from self-ownership, ownership of the body, control over the body.
And you cannot make my arm move.
I can make my arm move, hopefully voluntarily.
And because I can make my arm move, I am responsible for my arm.
I am responsible for the effects of my arm.
If I slap someone across the face, I am responsible for the pain and suffering of that slap.
And if I cut down a tree using an axe held by my hand, then I am responsible.
I own Myself and I own the effects of my actions.
Whether it's a cut-down tree or a slap on the face or whatever.
I own the effects of my actions.
If I choose to have a child, then I own or am responsible for that child.
And you can't argue against this.
You simply cannot argue against this.
Because the only way to argue against self-ownership is to exercise self-ownership.
I did a Peter Schiff show this week where I talked a little bit about property.
And people got all kinds of indignant and said, well, if I own my body, why can I not voluntarily turn off my ears?
Why can I choose to open my eyes but not see?
Why does my body get sick if I own it and control over it?
Well, ownership is control over, but not magical control of every aspect, right?
It's like saying, well, I own my car, so how come it breaks down?
Well, I own my car.
How come it needs maintenance?
Well, because you're owning the car doesn't mean that it's then free of the laws of causality and can fly and so on.
Other people, of course, were arguing vociferously against self-ownership.
They were saying, you, Steph, in the comments section under YouTube, or in my inbox, they were saying, you, Steph, are wrong about self-ownership because of X, Y, and Z. And it is the distinct lack of self-knowledge and philosophical awareness that I think should be fairly obvious, but obviously is not.
That people didn't understand that by telling me, Steph, you are wrong, what they're saying is that, Steph, you own the argument, and your argument is incorrect.
Your argument is incorrect.
Well, how did they know it's mine?
Because I produced it.
Right?
So, therefore, it's my argument.
So, my argument is...
Something that I have created and put out into the world and people correct me because they say, Steph, you are wrong.
Your argument is wrong.
How do you know it's mine?
Because I created it, therefore it's mine.
See, you can argue against it.
Not to mention that if you type comments into a YouTube box, you are exercising exclusive ownership over your fingers and the keyboard and the computer and the internet connection that you are, at least in the particular stream between you and the YouTube servers.
So you're exercising self-ownership.
And you are arguing against my argument, which is agreeing with the self-ownership and effect of my action creation of my argument.
And you are exercising exclusive use over property to argue against self-ownership.
Ownership for the effects of one's actions and the exclusive use of property.
You can't do it.
You can't do it.
The only way to argue against self-ownership with any kind of internal consistency Is to not exercise self-ownership, which means the argument will never be produced.
Or to hear an argument of mine on YouTube and then respond to your cat as if your cat had made that argument.
In which case, I will never know and I don't really care.
In fact, I think that would be a fine thing for people to do who lack philosophical knowledge to that degree.
But the moment you respond to me, you are affirming that I am responsible for the argument I have produced, that it is the effects of my self-ownership, and you are exercising self-ownership to do so.
You simply cannot argue against self-ownership without exercising self-ownership.
You cannot argue against someone's argument without accepting and exceeding the point That he or she is responsible for the argument, having created it.
So, sorry.
You cannot argue against exclusive use without using exclusive use, even if it's of your own larynx and tongue and vocal cords and so on.
So, I mean, it's weary to point it out, but it's just something that people don't They simply don't get yet.
They think that they can vault over their own arguments and just start to argue as if what they've done has no philosophical content.
Everybody wants to create a rule and exempt themselves, right?
Self-ownership is incorrect.
Hey, aren't you just using self-ownership to establish that?
Well, forget about me.
Let's just look at the principle.
Well, no, we can't forget about you, because if you're exercising a principle that violates the argument that you're making, then that's kind of what we need to do.
It's the most efficient way to be philosophical, is to look at what the person is doing and the consistency with their argument.
And if they don't see and recognize the complete inconsistency between their actions and their argument, then they're not worth debating because they simply don't either have the intelligence or the awareness or the insight or the self-knowledge or the humility or the practice or the education or the wisdom to understand that if you're going to make an argument, the first thing you need to do is look at your own actions and the premises that are embedded and fully accepted in that which you were doing.
I mean, if I say to you, language is incomprehensible, and I don't look at the fact that I'm using language and assuming the comprehensibility of language to argue for the incomprehensibility of language, then I am a fool or a knave or an idiot.
I mean, maybe you can skip over this, but once it's pointed out, if you then avoid that...
If I write you a letter containing the argument that letters never get to the intended recipient, then obviously it's ridiculous of me to do that because I'm using a letter to mail you something that says to make an argument that mail never gets delivered to the intended recipient.
So either you never receive my argument, in which case, why did I even write it?
Or you do receive my argument, in which case I have contradicted the content of the letter because it has now been...
Deliver to the intended recipient.
Anyway, we understand this, right?
Look at your own actions first, right?
Self-examination, self-knowledge first, abstract philosophy much later, much later, much later.
I spent...
Over 20 years on self-knowledge before I started talking about philosophy in the public realm.
Self-knowledge first, philosophy later.
Everybody wants to leap into philosophy like everybody wants to be a CEO and nobody wants to work in the mailroom.
But work in the mailroom first.
So, we own ourselves.
We own the effects of our actions.
Can't be argued against.
And if you are confused about property, always start with the body.
Again, people want to leap into patents and copyrights, intellectual property and homesteading and this and that.
It's like, no, no, no, no.
Start with the body.
Start with the internal organs.
Do you own your kidney?
Do you own your kidney?
Do you own your liver?
Do you own your lungs?
Well, if you do, then you are sane and good for you.
But if you think that you don't, then you have to defend the proposition that, let's say, there's somebody who's a smoker, and the person who is a smoker has wrecked his lung, or has got cancer in a lung.
And that smoker then comes to you with a thug with a knife and says, I'm going to take your lung, because I have a cancerous lung, and you, who have been a marathon runner and never touched a cigarette, you have two healthy lungs, I have a diseased lung, I am now going to take your lung.
And they chloroform you, they hack out your lung, and they replace the guy's cancerous lung.
If you have a problem with that, then you are sane.
Right, obviously.
If you don't have a problem with that, then...
I mean, you almost don't know what to say about that.
Then there is no such thing as murder.
There's no such thing as rape.
There's no such thing as assault.
Because if the woman doesn't own her vagina, if she doesn't have exclusive use control over her vagina or the man over his butt or whatever else is being penetrated, then there is no such thing as rape.
And if you want to argue that there's no such thing as rape, and no such thing as theft, and no such thing as murder, and so on, then...
I mean, you're talking about something other than ethics.
Bablings of a raving lunatic.
But, you know, we can get into that argument more if you want, but the best place to go is to my free book, Universally Preferable Behavior, at freedomainradio.com forward slash free.
So...
We own ourselves.
I have grown and watered my kidney low these many years.
I have taken pretty good care of my heart.
I don't really drink much.
I don't smoke.
I exercise a couple of times a week and I take pretty good care of things.
So I have grown the garden called me fairly well.
I try to keep my weight at a reasonable level and all that kind of good stuff.
And so we understand that when we own ourselves, we have exclusive use control over our internal organs, right?
If you foolishly pick up a bunch of fireworks and you blow both of your thumbs off, you don't get to hack off one of my thumbs and reattach it to you.
You don't get to do that.
You can ask me for a thumb, I guess, but you cannot wrestle me down, sew off my thumb, and attach it to you and call that a just redistribution of thumbhood.
Fundamentally, there is no moral difference between that which is within my skin and that which is outside my skin.
Because you can't just create magical differentiation between matter.
So, my spleen is a piece of matter that I have invested labor into maintaining, as are my lungs and my foot and all these things that are attached in part of me.
I have invested considerable labor in...
Taking care of these things.
Just as I would have a garden or a house or a car or anything like that.
You can't just create magical distinctions between a kidney and a car.
They both matter.
They both require the investment of labor to achieve or to maintain.
And they can both be damaged by ill use.
I mean, there's no fundamental difference between a car and a kidney.
And if you doubt that, then let me throw this following curveball at you.
Heavily Vaseline, as usual.
But obviously, if you cut out my heart, I'm going to die.
And so violations of self-ownership, of property rights that result in my death are obviously murder.
But you don't have to take something that is within my body in order to kill me.
I mean, if you lock me in a basement, take away my food and water source, I will die.
If we are scuba diving 200 feet under the water and you take my scuba gear or, you know, just cut through my respirator or whatever, then I'm going to die.
I can't make it to the surface in time without putting a fat Albert with the bends and going boom.
And...
These are situations which will cause me to die where there is a properly right violation.
And this is all very, very important, right?
So the idea that there's some magical distinction between rape and theft is a false dichotomy.
I mean, I think it's worth having different words for them because they are, you know, they're different, right?
But philosophically...
Taking control over somebody else's property, whether it is their body, through slavery, through rape, or their property outside their body, whether it's property inside the body or property outside the body, doesn't matter.
It's still stuff is stuff.
A kidney is an iPad.
If it has been justly acquired, then there is no magical distinction.
There's only this weird mind-body dichotomy that we have that says that the matter that is inside our bodies has a fundamentally different level of ownership than that which is outside our bodies.
And the reason why this proper gland exists is because if you had a government program for the redistribution of kidneys, the violence and ugliness and vileness of the program would be immediately viscerally evident to people.
But if you have a program for the violent redistribution of money, of income through taxation, then it looks a whole lot more civilized.
I mean, that's why this distinction.
Morally, there's no fundamental distinction, but they create this distinction so that you aren't exposed to the same horrors.
Now, property rights and time is very important.
Property rights and time are very, very important to understand.
Property rights are really defined through time.
So, if I rent a car, obviously I pay a lot less, but then I have to give the car back.
If I rent an apartment versus buying a condo, I have a different relationship.
And that relationship is time.
I have exclusive views for a particular period of time.
And the longer the time, the greater the cost.
And this is important.
This is important because property rights fundamentally are a theft of time.
Property rights fundamentally are a theft of time.
So if I steal your iPad and it costs 500 bucks and you make, you know, 10 bucks an hour, then it costs you 50 hours to replace it.
I have involuntarily enslaved you for 50 hours.
You know, just as if I grabbed you every morning and put you in a factory, changed you to a lathe and made you do some work for some period of time.
The fact that you get to choose the place of your enslavement does not change your status.
A slave who gets to choose his master or location is still a slave.
And so the theft of time, which is really the most finite resource, because it's the one thing that when you're dead you get no more of.
It's the one thing they make it more of, and we certainly can't live forever these days.
And so time is really the essence of property rights and of property rights violations.
Property exclusive ownership extended through time is true ownership, otherwise it's rental.
And Violations of property rights are involuntary servitude for the costs of replacing it.
And that's just not a physical space.
It's also a mental space, right?
So you're going to break into someone's house and steal their stuff.
Then they're going to feel uneasy in their house pretty much forever.
I mean, you've disturbed their peace of mind.
And peace of mind is something that people really like.
How many times have you heard, you should buy this insurance for peace of mind?
Peace of mind is a very important thing to have.
And violations of property also cause psychological distress, which is very real.
Very real.
So, those are some basic aspects of property.
Now, the question is, how are property rights established?
And we all understand that if you own your kidney because it's in you and you feed it and you water it and you take it for walks and rest it and so on.
But what about a log cabin?
Well, my fundamental argument is that property is something which is created.
Property is something that is created.
The true essence of property rights is in that which is created.
So if I go to some unowned area of the woods and I cut down...
I clear a bunch of land and I make a log cabin, well, the log cabin only exists because I have created it.
And so, by creating that log cabin, I have brought something into existence that did not otherwise exist.
In the same way that if I rob a store, I have brought a crime into existence that otherwise would not exist.
You see, we own the effects of our actions.
If you're going to deny property rights, you must deny morality and moral responsibility as a whole.
Because if I don't own the log cabin that I have built, then I don't own the murder that I have committed.
So, in many ways, ownership is synonymous with am responsible for.
I am responsible for the log cabin if I build it.
I'm also responsible for the log cabin burning down if I set fire to it.
You don't get one without the other.
If there's no such thing as ownership through creation, there is no such thing as crime through destruction.
If I don't own what I have created, I cannot be condemned for that which I destroy.
Because both are effects of my actions.
And I own both.
So if you deny creation and homesteading, you must deny arson and destruction.
And of course, if you do deny arson and destruction and theft and rape and murder, then you have bigger fish to fry than arguing with me about property rights.
You must then launch a concerted attack against everybody who's enforcing property rights and protecting persons and their physical property, whether it's their self or their stuff.
And I'm going to be way down on your list of people to get to because that's quite a task to take on and I wish you the best with it.
Actually, that's not true.
That was kind of snarky.
I don't wish you the best with it.
I wish you'd go learn something about philosophy.
So, the example of a fish.
I've used that before, but it's a good example.
And the question is to ask, how much are you going to pay for something?
And if you won't pay something, if you won't pay anything for something, then you've got to really ask, why?
So, if I say to you, I go on Kijiji or eBay, and I say, for sale, one fish somewhere in the ocean.
Well, How much are you going to pay for a fish somewhere in the ocean?
I'm not going to tell you where it is.
I'm not even going to tell you what color it is.
How much are you going to pay for the ownership rights of some fish somewhere in the ocean?
Well, you're not going to pay anything, of course, right?
You're not going to pay a penny.
Because there's no access to it.
If I say, I'm going to sell you a log cabin for $200,000, and I tell you it's right by the lake here, and you pay me the money, and then I take you down there, and it's just a tree, a bunch of trees, and I say, well, the log cabin is currently embedded in all these trees.
You just have to, you know, sweat a little to get it out and put it together.
I sell you a jigsaw puzzle, and you want to put it together.
Well, I've sold you a jigsaw puzzle called Log Cabin Embedded in Trees.
Well...
You're going to feel kind of ripped off, right?
Because there's only a potential log cabin there, not a log cabin.
In the same way, let's say I show you a close-up picture of a log cabin, and I say it's $200,000 for this log cabin.
And you say, great, I'll take it.
Where is it?
I say, not going to tell you.
Well, you're going to own something that you can't ever access, because you'll have no idea where it is.
So you won't...
Again, just try this.
It would be ludicrous, right?
Just go to, you know, call up a...
You know, do these experiments.
Again, if you doubt me, call up a real estate agent and say, I want to sell a house.
Oh, where is it located?
I'm not going to tell you.
I mean, they just laugh at you and hang up the phone.
What an idiot.
It takes a lot of education to make this stuff sound sensible, right?
Anyway...
So, the difference between a fish somewhere in the ocean and a fish that is encased in batter at a restaurant is that the fish in the restaurant is usable.
It has utility.
You have access to it.
You can do something with it.
And so, when you take a fish from the depths of the ocean and you catch it and you put it in a boat and you clean it and you whatever, you gut it and you ship it off to a restaurant on ice, you have converted it from inaccessible to accessible.
In the same way, when you cut down trees to make a log cabin, you've converted the log cabin from inaccessible and non-utilited, i.e.
buried in trees, to something which can actually be used.
In this way, property is created.
In a very real sense, the fish is created when you go to the ocean and catch it.
I mean, in terms of property, of course the fish exists for you to catch it.
I'm not saying it's created metaphysically.
But what happens is you create utility in the fish.
You create usability in the fish.
The fish is transferred from an unusable non-property state, where it exists, but who cares, to a usable property state.
In the same way, a tree is transformed from, it's not really a log cabin that you can use, into a log cabin that it can be, the log cabin is created.
So, property really is something which is created.
If you write a book, the book exists because you wrote it, and you did not, and it would not have existed if you didn't write it.
So, it is created, right?
It is created.
And this is a very fundamental aspect of this.
Very fundamental aspect of property.
It is that which is created.
Now, let's get to homesteading.
And I really appreciate your patience.
This is a very, very important topic.
Let's get to homesteading.
Homesteading is the idea that if you fence off a property, a piece of property, then you are gaining control over it.
So there's some unowned piece of land in the middle of nowhere, and you go and you put a couple hundred yards of fence around it, And now it's yours to farm or to build a house or whatever, right?
Well, how does that work?
Well, again, what you want to look at is the property that is created that otherwise would not be created.
So, if you enclose land, what you're doing is you are going to plant your crops.
Let's just say you can plant some corn and then next year you get some corn.
Well, The corn is the essence of the property rights, not the land.
It's the corn that is the essence of the property rights, not the land.
If you build a house on that property only because you have exclusive use, right?
Not a lot of people spend a lot of time building houses in public parks because they, you know, they just get kicked off or they don't have use over it.
And so you will only build a house if you have exclusive use.
And it's the house that only exists because of the homesteading that is the essence of the property rights.
The homesteading is exclusive use of a resource in order to.
In order to.
And I say this from grim personal experience.
As I've mentioned before, I spent a lot of time After high school, as a gold painter and prospector up in northern Ontario, Iowa, where the black fly, the little black fly, eats your brains and feasts on your eyeballs.
And it's hard work.
Oh, I will tell you.
A friend of mine and I were...
It was just one day we had to go through a...
You know, a hellish swamp with lots of brambles and bushes underneath the swamp water and it kept tripping us up.
There were leeches in the swamp and bugs everywhere and it was really hot.
I just remember slogging along.
I was turning to my friend and saying, oh man, there's got to be a better way and an easier way to earn a living because this is just seriously not much fun at all.
I mean, sometimes it was fun, but for the most part it was just a hard slog.
We didn't do that because we'd go in a kilometer square and we would nail little metal tags on posts.
We'd drive the posts into the ground, you put your tags on, and it's a kilometer, I think, was the limit that you could do.
That's how we would gain mineral rights for a particular period of time.
Then we would gold pan and see if we could find anything of utility.
If we found something of utility, we had ownership of that land for a fixed period of time.
And if we didn't redo the claims taking, then the land would revert back to an unknown status and all this kind of stuff.
So I've done a lot of homesteading, probably more than most of you put together.
I'm not saying I'm proud of it.
I'm just saying it's an interesting historical fact that got me thinking about this stuff when I was 18 or 19.
And we weren't nailing these little plaques on the trees because we just really enjoyed digging leeches out of our Wellington boots.
No.
It was not because we enjoyed inhaling bugs that were full of our own blood.
No, not really so much.
Or because we liked wondering whether the bear tracks were fresh or old.
No, not really so much.
Wolf?
I don't know.
Anyway, so...
We did that because we were interested in the gold.
It was the production of gold that was the purpose of homesteading, the property, of enclosing the property.
So it's the property that is created as a result of the homesteading that is the essence of the property rights involved.
And if you doubt this, then just ask yourself.
So again, think of the Kijiji or eBay example.
You say, I will sell you an acre of land.
Where?
I'm not going to tell you.
Or maybe I will tell you, but you're never allowed to visit it, touch it, see it, resell it, or anything like that.
Well, you would not pay me anything for that, because you wouldn't, right?
You would have this thing called ownership, but no capacity to utilize it, even to look on it as a pretty view.
And that is very, very important when you're thinking about property rights.
If you can't do something, if you can't create something with the property, whether it's crops, or a lake that you want to fish in, or a house that you want to build, or even just a pretty view you want to look at, or a go-kart track you want to create, or you name it.
If you can't do anything with the property, Then you are not going to pay anything for it.
So this is why, you know, homesteading is the means to the end.
The end is the property that you can create.
Now, let's come up with a counterexample.
Let's say you buy it to do nothing with it.
Let's say that you want to protect some wetlands.
You buy up a bunch of wetlands with the express purpose of not doing anything with it.
Well, you are actually creating something there, which is you are creating the continued existence of the wetland and its creatures, which otherwise would be threatened.
Right?
So you are actually maintaining something.
And we do lots of stuff to maintain stuff, right?
And I go to the dentist not to get new teeth.
I would like four extra fangs coming out of my nose.
But no, we go to the dentist because we want to maintain our existing teeth, right?
The maintenance of that, which is, is a fine reason to invest in property.
You know, you change the oil in your car to maintain the engine.
And so if you buy wetlands because you want to continue the wetlands, you're buying the continuation of the wetlands, stuff which will be there, which otherwise wouldn't be there.
I mean, you wouldn't buy a square acre of the top of the ocean in the middle of the Pacific in order to keep it wet, because it's going to stay wet anyway.
So it's only because you expect there to be incursions upon the property that you're going to buy to maintain it, and what you're buying is a continued maintenance of the froggies and the herons and whatever is in the wetland that you want to keep it.
So, that's important.
So remember, people get confused about homesteading because they think that it's the land that is the real property.
But it is not the land that is the real property.
It is what is created through the exclusive use of the land.
That's really, really important to understand.
It is not The acreage that is enclosed, that is the important property, it is the crops that will be produced, which otherwise, without that enclosure, will not be produced.
So it is property that is brought into being.
Now it is true, the land is not brought into being, the land is not brought into being, but the crops are.
And the crops are only brought into being as a result of the homesteading.
And it is the creation of property that is the essence of property rights.
And the homesteading is a means to the creation of property that otherwise would not exist.
And Clearly, if you create property that otherwise would not exist, you are responsible for the creation of that property.
You are responsible for that property.
That property is yours because you're the only person that created it and it wouldn't be there otherwise and so how can anyone else claim use over it?
And you understand that claiming rights over other people's property is not UPB compliant, because if it's universal, if it's ethical, then it has to be for everyone.
And therefore you come up with a moral rule that says everyone can claim the rights over everyone else's property.
And so I come and say, I want your kidney.
And the guy says, well, I want your kidney.
And I want my kidney back because there's no such thing as personal property.
And so these all just cancel each other out.
It's like giving everyone the right to tax.
I tax you $1,000.
Well, I tax you $1,000.
Let's just call it even, right?
It just doesn't work.
So that is a very, very important aspect to remind yourself.
It's not the land.
It's the crops that count because the crops don't exist without the homesteading.
Now, questions then of course arise and say, well, why can't I just pull a Columbus, plant a flag and claim a whole continent?
Well, because that can't be universalized, right?
Because then everyone can then do it.
Everyone can then go and do that.
And everyone then claimed a continent, nobody owns anything.
And there are, you know, there are practical enactments of philosophical principles that I think are important, and you can just look to common law for this.
So, generally, it should be line of sight, right?
So, you should be able to see everything that you're enclosing for the simple reason that if you can't see it, then you might be enclosing someone else's property.
And that sets up a situation of conflict, which is, you know, not particularly helpful to anyone.
And so this is why there's a land registry.
So if you want to go and claim some property, the first place you go is to the land registry to see if it's been claimed before.
And this is what would work in a free society, right?
You'd go to a land registry and you'd say, I'm going to claim this property.
And they'd say, okay, we'll pay you a fee.
We'll guarantee you that this property is unowned.
And if there's any conflict in ownership, we will pay for all of your costs to defend it.
And if we lose, we will pay you the value of the property.
That's easy enough.
It's sort of insurance plus the double check up front.
And so I think the line of sighting is very important.
And people say, well, what if two people start homesteading at the same time?
Well, there is, you know, it's the person who goes first, who generally wins.
And the case of the two guys in the room is important and worth examining.
Because it's kind of an artificial scenario.
In fact, it's a very artificial scenario.
So, for instance, if people say, well, you know, two guys want to homestead a table and a room.
Well, they can't because they're in a room, which means they're in somebody's property already and the table has been bought and paid for and you can't homestead something that somebody already owns.
Now, another example which people could come up with, the endless, but, you know, still quite useful nitpicking of the libertarian mindset, they could say, okay, so let's say a guy puts a table out front of his house and he says, y'all can have this table.
You know, it says, take it if you want.
And then two guys come along and both want the table at the same time, and they both run for it.
Well, who gets it?
Well, you know, clearly the guy who touches it first would be the guy who gets it.
And that would be important.
They can't both touch it at the same time, right, even at the atomic level.
And if they seem to touch it at the same time, then they just flip a coin or rock, paper, scissors or whatever, and that's how they're going to deal with that.
But remember, you know, touching a piece of property is not the same as establishing ownership, right?
Otherwise, everyone I clapped my hands on in friendship would be my slave.
And, you know, if I touch a TV at a hotel, I get to take it.
Touching is not ownership.
Remember, it's the conversion to utility that counts.
So if I said, well, I'm going to sell you this table in my yard sale, but you can never take it from my yard, you'd be like, well, then I'm not going to buy it, because the whole point of that is to take it.
And so the purpose of getting the table that's out front of somebody's yard that's garbage is to be able to take it home and use it.
And only one person can take it home and use it.
You could say, well, they both live in the same place.
Well, then why are they fighting, right?
But only one person.
So once it's taken home, once it's converted to utility, once the person takes it home, puts it in their basement and mounts a table saw on it, That's the actual property.
I mean, the touching is simply to...
The touching is like the homesteading.
It allows you to convert that into utility, and they both can't...
Or they can't both take it home and put a table saw on it in their own basements, right?
You understand?
So...
So these are the generally accepted approaches to property.
And the homesteading, of course, is to further the creation of property that otherwise wouldn't exist, which really is to add to the wealth of humanity.
So, yeah, two guys can't homestead the same thing in the same room.
And just look at this logically.
Let's just say that the room is, like, the floor of the room is unowned, whatever, it's covered in earth, and they both want to grow plants under fluorescence or whatever.
Then they can each homestead Half the room, right?
There's a north half of the room and a south half of the room.
They can, each of these guys, Bob and Doug, they can homestead the north and south part of the room, each individually.
But they cannot both have exclusive use of both the north and the south part of the room at the same time.
And that's very, very important.
And they can't both do that.
I mean, just logically, they can't both do that.
I mean, Bob can have the north end, and Doug can have the south end, but they cannot both have the north and the south end exclusive use simultaneously.
And that's just a UPB thing.
So I hope this makes some sense.
I hope this helps with property questions.
Always fascinating.
And thank you so much for the listenership.
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