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Hey ruveyn. If you´re reading Proudhon there is a passage in which he asks himself "What is Property?" in the book "What is Property?" (1840) and then he responds "it is theft”. What do you think about that one? Sorry but I like being polemic!

There he is wrong. The idea that a person should have to ask the entire human race for permission to take something from nature is ipso facto absurd.

Nature is open to whoever can take from nature.

ruveyn

Taking things from nature is a function of a rather small sector of humanity. Most people take things from each other. Only Antarctica and the open seas are unclaimed.

All wealth consists of things derived from material extracted from nature or labor/services. The first property humans had was game hunted and consumed, crops planted and reaped. Plants are what the soil produces. Fish taken from the waters. The second tier of wealth was artifacts constructed from natural material. Stone points for example. And the third tier of wealth were services such as healing wounds or sickness. All wealth and property is built on this foundation.

I reject Proudhon's implication that picking an apple off a wild tree is theft. Picking an apple off a tree I planted on land I own is theft, but taking food to each out of unowned nature is not theft, yet the food is property.

ruveyn

The only nature these days unowned is air. If you enjoy fairytales I would not discourage you but it is not salable.

The first property was scavenged. Scraper tools to render meat from the bones of already deceased animals existed before the tools necessary to hunt and kill animals. It also explains our greedy nature...we're scavengers at our origins and we horde what corpses we find for their meat not only for our own sake but also for our benefit over others.

It's one reason why I find corporate greed so boring and intolerable. It's little more than this initial primal instinct being registered to scrap over the corpse and horde its goods. It's a boring primal instinct that doesn't serve us in the long run and such people shouldn't be allowed to even start to dictate any kind of policy.