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> but you don't prove that it's impossible for any other system of ownership or of mediating access to resources/"things" to allow that. You can’t prove a nega
by labcomputer 10mo ago
> but you don't prove that it's impossible for any other system of ownership or of mediating access to resources/"things" to allow that.
You can’t prove a negative, so the onus is actually on you to show an example of a working alternative that does not rely on property.
And it has been tried in the 20th century. Several times, in fact. Despite all the industrial espionage committed by the Soviet Union (which saved them the resources to do the research themselves) and the slave labor of people who spoke or wrote about the “wrong” ideas (which surplus was given to the rest of the population), ordinary people in the USSR had much worse lives than those in the West.
- immibis 10mo agoThe Soviet Union won the space race, but I'm not sure if they had property or not. They were a dictatorship, anyway, so we probably don't want to repeat that.
- treyd 10mo agoThe legal system in USSR also had the concept of property.
- labcomputer 10mo agoYes, it did[1]! Because they rather quickly discovered that you can’t build complex things without it. Which brings us back round to the original point! [1] But… they did make a go of it without property before discovering that it wouldn’t work. It turns out (shockingly!) that indentured serfs (who make the food) like the idea of land reform when it means they own the land. But they don’t like it so much when it means nobody owns the land. And when they are not happy then you have no food. And then those quotes about “x meals until y” start to have some salience. And then you start to think about the most effective way to use the number of bullets you have on hand (which is smaller than the number of mouths you need to feed).