If there was no possession.

MarkL444 · #1 07-06-2005, 12:57 AM

If there was no such thing as possession, meaning of course there is no money, in what ways would this world as a whole be worse off?

maurile · #2 07-06-2005, 01:02 AM

Let's say you spend all winter growing corn and then everyone else eats it all because it didn't belong to you (since there's no such thing as property rights).

You probably won't spend all next winter growing corn, will you?

Neither will anyone else.

MarkL444 · #3 07-06-2005, 01:12 AM

Surely there has to have been a society at some point that didn't have possession but functioned successfully.

maurile · #4 07-06-2005, 01:25 AM

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Surely there has to have been a society at some point that didn't have possession but functioned successfully.

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Nope. Property rights were recognized (not legally, but morally) even before our ancestors were fully human. Every human society has had the concepts of "mine" and "his" and "ours," etc.

jason1990 · #5 07-06-2005, 01:31 AM

Just an interesting tangent: apparently, there is no word for "to have" in Hindi. Instead of saying, for example, "I have a pencil," one says, "A pencil is in my vicinity."

SmileyEH · #6 07-06-2005, 01:36 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Surely there has to have been a society at some point that didn't have possession but functioned successfully.

[/ QUOTE ]
Nope. Property rights were recognized (not legally, but morally) even before our ancestors were fully human. Every human society has had the concepts of "mine" and "his" and "ours," etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think some hunter-gatherers are still around which do not have personal property rights. They have a concept of a "tribe's" possessions however which still provides incentive. I'm not positive, but I wouldn't rule out the lack of property rights entirely in human history.

-SmileyEH

BZ_Zorro · #7 07-06-2005, 01:43 AM

On a lesser scale, there is a reason why free market economies are far more successful than state economies. Much of it has to do with personal incentive and the energy that creates.

maurile · #8 07-06-2005, 01:51 AM

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I think some hunter-gatherers are still around which do not have personal property rights.

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Try taking their meat from them. They'll beat you up. But if the meat belongs to you because you brought it there, they are much less likely to beat you up and take it (or at least, if they do steal it from you, they will realize they are being bullies, unlike the first case).

Jane Goodall once saw the alpha male beg for hours for a low ranking chimp to share some meat with him, and eventually give up and go away.

MarkL444 · #9 07-06-2005, 01:57 AM

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On a lesser scale, there is a reason why free market economies are far more successful than state economies. Much of it has to do with personal incentive and the energy that creates.

[/ QUOTE ]

Isn't incentive strongly related to greed which wouldn't (or would it) be possible w/o possession.

BZ_Zorro · #10 07-06-2005, 02:08 AM

Greed is always there. The only difference between possession and no possession is the amount of time something is in your control.

Possession guarantees it forever, provides security, and enables tasks to be completed as you know what tools you have to work with and how many resources are allocated to you. No possession guarantees resources/goods until someone else wants it. This goes for everything from a bar of soap, food in fridge, to a car or a house.

So greed will still be there. You'll just get people getting more than their fair share without doing anything for it, fighting over who will have something for a certain period of time, and lack of respect for property (as there is no ownership). In addition there will be no real incentive to do anything at all.