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It should be owned as long as people must rely on ownership to survive in our society.


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My own take is if something is that valuable, it should be owned by everybody.

Ownership is a human invention. You can't take it with you, you're only ever really leasing it, and to the degree that you distribute it, what you're actually exercising is power to get other people do what you want (or delegating that power).

Ownership will exist for as long as there's support in governance and law for it. If ownership doesn't deliver enough benefit for the majority in society, then expect society to alter the terms of the bargain.


As we’re starting to rely more and more on the technology, be for identification, information, etc I’d argue ownership should be a human right. It may not be necessarily essential today, but we’re heading in that direction

I really wish we were at the point in society where we could have an effective discussion on the definition of ownership.

Why should they continue to own it? So that some other account can't write a four-line paragraph and tell us to take what you own. We protect other peoples' property rights in order to secure our own.

You're treating ownership as if it's some natural right. It's not. The idea of property and ownership is a social construct, so it makes sense that society gets to determine the rules of this construct.

And society has generally determined that your "ownership" comes with a fee to cover the societal costs that make it all possible. E.g., car and house property taxes to cover police depts, fire depts, etc. Without which see how long your precious possessions last.


That's a hell of a claim to back up. Any kind of argument for this idea? Ownership is meaningful. What is access—is my local McDonalds a public service?

This smells very similar to "access to affordable" housing and healthcare. Sounds great, but at the end of the day, people are still without health care and housing, so they clearly DON'T have access. Ownership is the only way to guarantee material access.


Is property ownership instinctive? I'd definitely agree that [usage] is instinctive, in that one may want to use something without interruption or threat of having it taken away during usage. However, the idea that one needs to own something after it has been used, no longer needs to be used, or simply is no longer in use seems interesting.

Maybe I'm too idealistic, but I could imagine a society where everything is communal. I just think we started off in a way that would make it too difficult to transition to that now (too many people have too much to lose).


Ownership is exhausting. You can only "own" anything by going to great lengths to protect it. Ultimately, you are still reliant on the relationships you have with others and their willingness to respect that it is yours.

Yes, if you can prevent everyone else from taking something, you own that thing.

That's what ownership is.


Sure, the name of the social construct is ownership. Therefore, you own it. Because of the social construct.

Ownership is a social construct. The leviathan can come and take away your bits at any time.

If the person who owns it is the government, then it belongs to the public.

Ownership is a legal right. You found/created it, so society gives you the right to rule about it's usage for a certain time. The same applies to physical objects. You own something, because society gives you the permission, not because you have the actual power to protect it with your own muscles.

And there is nothing wrong with this concept; it encourages people to search and create, and prevents people from being abused by the strong and getting their findings stolen. Generally, this is beneficial for everyone and lets society moving forward and to higher levels of quality.


The very concept of ownership is a social artifact, and as such, is not immutable. What does it mean for the 0.1% to own all the means of production? They can't physically possess them all. So what it means in practice is that our society recognizes the abstract notion of property ownership, distinct from physical possession or use - basically, the right to deny other people the use of that property, or allow it conditionally. This recognition is what reifies it - registries to keep track of owners, police and courts to enforce the right to exclude.

But, again, this is a construct. The only reason why it holds up is because most people support it. I very much doubt that's going to remain the case for long if we end up in a situation where the elites own all the (now automated) capital and don't need the workers to extract wealth from it anymore. The government doesn't even need to expropriate anything - just refuse to recognize such property rights, and withdraw its protection.

I hope that there are sufficiently many capitalists who are smart enough to understand this, and to manage a smooth transition. Because if they won't, it'll get to torches and pitchforks eventually, and there's always a lot of collateral damage from that. But, one way or another, things will change. You can't just tell several billion people that they're not needed anymore, and that they're welcome to starve to death.


You only own it when you can give it away. Otherwise, it owns you.

No, you don't own the property. Under what coherent system of thought could you possibly own something that was there before humans existed and will be there after humans are gone, and which you did nothing to create or maintain? Property ownership is a societal construct that we agree to use to improve our lives together. If it's not serving our needs we can change it.

I don't actually know the answer to this, but wouldn't you expect everything you say to be true in a society where ownership is the norm and not the case in a society where it isn't?

Ownership of property has always been so
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