A favorite of mine from Existential Comics. Most of the site's comics are comedy-oriented with philosophy as more of a framing device. But every now and then comes a comic that makes a point. This...
A favorite of mine from Existential Comics. Most of the site's comics are comedy-oriented with philosophy as more of a framing device. But every now and then comes a comic that makes a point. This is one I found particularly convincing.
For convenience, and because it can be easy to miss, here's the author's elaboration on the point from below the comic
Like all the dialogue comics, the two characters don't represent any philosophers in particular, but merely discuss an idea.
Robert Nozick's concept of a "Utility Monster" was a thought experiment aiming to criticize Utilitarianism. He imagines a "monster" with a capacity for happiness so much greater than our own, that we would be morally obligated to sacrifice everything to give the monster pleasure, as that would result in the most overall happiness. Most people recoil from this conclusion, due to its apparent unfairness. Nozick uses this idea to argue against the redistribution of wealth, because it would be unjust. He favors a society based on free exchange only, where wealth is justified based on not how fairly it was distributed, but on how fairly it was acquired. So if someone becomes very wealthy through voluntary exchanges with other human beings, "redistributing" that wealth is effectively denying the ability for people to come to voluntary exchanges - denying their freedom. Even things like minimum wage laws he saw as restrictions on freedom, because after all if two people consent to the exchange, who is the government to say that they can't? Freedom, unlike total happiness, Nozick thought, could not be subject to a "Utility Monster" because your freedom does not take away from my freedom. The ability for people to make contracts isn't a finite resource that can be "sucked up".
However, Nozick's conception of freedom is based largely on contracts revolving around property rights. That is to say, freedom for Nozick is freedom to own and control not just your own personhood, but any property that you own. Property, like resources devoted to increasing "utility", is a finite resource that could theoretically be entirely owned by a single "Freedom Monster", or maybe "Justice Monster", but perhaps best named "Property Monster". Like the comic imagines, a monster that lived forever and bent its entire will to owning more and more land could, theoretically, through entirely voluntary transactions, own all of the land. If this situation arose, the monster would have infinite leverage in any negotiation that it entered into, because everyone on earth would starve unless they made a deal with the monster. From Nozick's point of view, because neither party was physically coerced, and the monster's property came from a history of free transactions, the monster's ownership of all its property is just and free. However, the situation that it leads to seems to be one that severely lacks freedom. The monster could make any rules it wanted, and everyone on earth would be more or less "freely" forced to [oblige] it. Most people would not describe this situation as one where humanity is more free.
Of course, if we find this situation abhorrent, we have to question why we do not find it abhorrent on a smaller scale. For example, millions of people are born without property today, and find themselves having to obey the rules set by their landlord or boss, and this obedience to property is described as "freedom", but structurally it is the same freedom enjoyed by people obeying the monster's arbitrary rules in order to live. The business owner or landlord can control others by having far greater leverage, not infinite leverage as the monster does, because they have to compete with other business owners or landlords, but far more leverage than the person with nothing. Worse, if we look at the situations in terms of class rather than individuals, the property owners as a class do have the infinite leverage of the monster, because they quite literally own everything. So far as they have common interests, they will naturally exploit that leverage to advance those interests with great ease, since the class with no property relies on the use of their property to survive. As to what a real freedom might look like, where one or more individuals couldn't use their massive leverage to exploit others in any manner they saw fit, well, that is as they say a question beyond the scope of this essay.
Honestly I kind of think that most arguments against utilitarianism are a bit silly. But it really depends on which utilitarianism you're talking about. The more concrete the philosophy is, the...
Honestly I kind of think that most arguments against utilitarianism are a bit silly. But it really depends on which utilitarianism you're talking about. The more concrete the philosophy is, the less it makes sense. I prefer to think of it more of a barometer to the effectiveness of ideals within the framework of a population. This is a particularly good example of a silly response. While freedom can lead to happiness, it is far from a guarantee of it. Neoliberal policies have sought to increase freedom but we can see as a result people are much less happy about their lives than they were before those policies began. On a smaller scale, we also know that having more options is actually negatively correlated with the satisfaction of making a choice.
I've never read Nozick's works so I can't represent anything he's said, but it sounds like he's a liberal philosopher. I used to believe in liberalism but it has a critical flaw in that it requires a strong government to regulate capitalism, and it seems that in any given liberal system capital will rise up to neuter government's ability to regulate it.
WARNING Derailing of topic ahead! Feel free to ignore and not engage :) People keep saying this, but is it really true? From my point of view neoliberal policies have sought to: make it possible...
WARNING Derailing of topic ahead! Feel free to ignore and not engage :)
Neoliberal policies have sought to increase freedom [...]
People keep saying this, but is it really true?
From my point of view neoliberal policies have sought to:
make it possible for capitalists to extract wealth from the state and other commons (private profit, socialised losses), impoverishing the societies where the policies are implemented.
make everyone care about the economy the same way that capitalists care about the economy (but we are all behind in capital, knowledge, actual care and time so we just keep getting more and more behind) to make us forget that another world is possible.
give people options on how to spend our money but the options don't really matter. Sure Disney+ might feel "better" than Netflix for some people but if we pooled our resources and cut out profits we could all have access to all the content with a great UI for far less money and cognitive work of choosing provider. (And do we really want to watch this much moving media or are we just to tired of it all to do anything else?)
My points are:
having sooo many options for everything is not "freedom" it is just "freedom of choice" (in Swedish we have the words "frihet" and "valfrihet" respectively)
being blasted with propaganda about consumption and "the economy" makes it really, really hard to not get dragged into it (plus the whole "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism").
(Disclaimer: I'm a classical European anarchist with a Marxist view on economy and Kropotkin's theory of mutual aid as a base.)
I agree with you. “Sought to” and “achieved” are two very different things! And frankly I doubt that the reason why those policies actually passed were because of philanthropic goals….
I agree with you. “Sought to” and “achieved” are two very different things! And frankly I doubt that the reason why those policies actually passed were because of philanthropic goals….
Ah! I see, I'm glad to hear that <3 (In my limited understanding of English "sought to" includes an intent. And in my opinion the intent was never there - regardless of the amount in the...
Ah! I see, I'm glad to hear that <3
(In my limited understanding of English "sought to" includes an intent. And in my opinion the intent was never there - regardless of the amount in the lipservice expense column.)
Although the point of the comic is most obviously about property rights, I also see it as being about scarcity in general. The world economy is running on trading things that one party has and...
Although the point of the comic is most obviously about property rights, I also see it as being about scarcity in general. The world economy is running on trading things that one party has and another one wants, and some of the parties accumulate more things which gives them leverage over the rest. Then this keeps accumulating because of generational wealth which is usually property, but may also be money, social titles, family names (such as "Windsor"), etc.
In Star Trek (at least in the early "good" Star Trek), humans have more fulfilling lives because it is a post-scarcity society. There's not much reason for war or hunger because replicator machines exist and anyone can have one.
In fact, the highly respected documentarian James Burke had a 2023 episode of Connections 3 called The End of Scarcity, where he talks about a "nanofabricator" that's going to give everyone everything they want.
The thing that James Burke seems to have missed is that we are already living in a society that is partly post-scarcity, but there are still people who are starving because some other people are hoarding resources and using that to obtain even more. There's going to be artificial scarcity because that benefits the hoarders. So when these replicators are invented, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg will have them, but they'll be illegal for most people to have for some invented reason. In Star Trek, the post-scarcity utopia is mostly because the philosophy of humans changed enough (due partly to a huge world war) so most people do not have this wealth hoarding reflex.
So yes I think this is a pretty neat comic that helps us realize that the current world order isn't the best possible and is actually pretty darn unfair.
Thanks for sharing. I love these comics, but hadn't seen this one before. I am extremely pro-property rights, by tildes standards, so keep that in mind as framing for the following commentary. I...
Thanks for sharing. I love these comics, but hadn't seen this one before.
I am extremely pro-property rights, by tildes standards, so keep that in mind as framing for the following commentary.
I don't think the property monster idea quite works. The thought experiment for the utility monster works because utilitarianism is genuinely trying to make universal claims about morals and ethics. The universal part is key, because if you can show that there are scenarios under which the philosophy fails, that calls its general applicability into question. By contrast, only the most unhinged sovereign citizen would take such an absolutist view on property rights that they would say that there should be no limitations ever, so constructing a similar hypothetical doesn't disprove the themes in the same way.
The author writes that we should wonder, then, why we accept smaller versions of this scenario. But I don't think that logically holds either. You could construct almost any scenario of something that's fine in moderation but becomes abhorrent when taken to an extreme. ("The government puts people in jail. What if they put everyone in jail? It'd be horrible. So why is it okay if some people are jailed?")
I think maybe the the biggest difference is that utilitarianism is theoretical but we actually have to deal with property in the real world. What I mean is that I think theoretical takedowns of philosophical precepts, with no alternatives, is fine because it's all thought experiments. But in the real world you've got to present an alternative. Okay, sure, people who own property could have power over those who don't. But somebody's got to own it, whether it be individuals or a board appointed by the state or whatever, so what's the actual proposal to make a system that's better?
The thing about the utility monster is that it was originally conceptualized by Robert Nozick, a man who believed in property rights so thoroughly that his philosophy considered the concept of...
utilitarianism is genuinely trying to make universal claims about morals and ethics. [...] By contrast, only the most unhinged sovereign citizen would take such an absolutist view on property rights that they would say that there should be no limitations ever,
The thing about the utility monster is that it was originally conceptualized by Robert Nozick, a man who believed in property rights so thoroughly that his philosophy considered the concept of selling yourself into slavery to be entirely just, provided you "freely" (free as in free market) made that deal. So yes, we are dealing with an extreme libertarian here.1
You could construct almost any scenario of something that's fine in moderation but becomes abhorrent when taken to an extreme.
Yes. That's what the bottom-left panel of the comic is saying. Meanwhile, the author's question regarding real-world, smaller-scale versions of the property monster is posed because, unlike the thought experiment, that issue actually exists. "Logical extremes are unhelpful because they do not happen" doesn't work as an argument when the scenario starts actually happening.
Crucially though, one of the points of this comic is to make the case that endless theorizing to the point of absurdity is not a good use of time, so you're agreeing with it a lot more than you realize.
1. Nozick believed this less later in his life, and in a way, even acknowledged the concept of a "property monster" by admitting that his entitlement theory could lead to "inequalities" that he said "seemed unfair." This lead him finding inheritance taxes agreeable, if only to a degree.
I should've asked first what you find the comic convincing of. If it's that Nozick specifically was wrong, then okay we agree on everything. I agree he was an extreme libertarian whose absolutist...
I should've asked first what you find the comic convincing of. If it's that Nozick specifically was wrong, then okay we agree on everything. I agree he was an extreme libertarian whose absolutist philosophy can be challenged with the property monster. What did you find it particularly convincing of?
Late response, sorry, but I've been busy! I appreciate the question, though. A couple things, really! When I first read it years back, I saw it as a convincing argument against free market...
Late response, sorry, but I've been busy! I appreciate the question, though.
A couple things, really! When I first read it years back, I saw it as a convincing argument against free market ideologies. I still feel that it is, but at the time, I don't think I spent very long noticing the last couple panels. These days I have, and so I now find the argument against absurd thought experiments more compelling, though that may just be because it's a newer realization for me.
I think we already agree on the latter, as it's rather plainly more useful to compare arguments to the world in which we live than it is to compare them to the philoso-spherical cow, as it were.
For the former, it was a convincing way of laying bare some inequalities that I saw as inherent to free-market ideologies. After all, what use is applying the term "free" to a market if that freedom is 1) based on ignoring leverage imbalances, and 2) the erstwhile freedom is self-destructive, as each trade further worsens the issue of leverage? Sure, the Property Monster will never exist, but we've still got Elon Musk, don't we? Even if we restrict our thinking to the U.S., wealth inequality today is rampant, and that is at least in part due to the fact that free markets grant large companies better trades than the poor.
I have other critiques against free markets, of course, but – much like the question of what the solution is – they're out-of-scope here.
Not "could have", just "have". Obviously if you are sub-letting a room in Caracas and I want to live in Oslo you don't have power over me directly while indirectly we are ofc part of the same...
Okay, sure, people who own property could have power over those who don't.
Not "could have", just "have". Obviously if you are sub-letting a room in Caracas and I want to live in Oslo you don't have power over me directly while indirectly we are ofc part of the same system.
But somebody's got to own it [...]
Not really. Although "own", "control" and "decide how to use, if at all" can seem like exactly synonymous they are not. (We are talking philosophically here, in everyday life I could make the opposite point to make a point.)
so what's the actual proposal to make a system that's better?
There are numerous proposals laying around. Some proposals I like are:
all infrastructure should be run without profit and be controlled by some kind of democratic institution
noone in a company can earn (including all benefits, packages, etc) more than double of anyone else (including all subcontractors, etc)
removing inheritance as a concept so that all property acquired by an individual is given back to the community on death (some exceptions apply and anti-weasel policies too!)
See, I would argue that philosophically and in practice they're identical and it's only legally that they're distinct. One of your proposals suggested that all infrastructure should be controlled...
Not really. Although "own", "control" and "decide how to use, if at all" can seem like exactly synonymous they are not. (We are talking philosophically here, in everyday life I could make the opposite point to make a point.)
See, I would argue that philosophically and in practice they're identical and it's only legally that they're distinct. One of your proposals suggested that all infrastructure should be controlled by a democratic institution, right? If that institution is controlling and apportioning all land, they "own" it in any real sense other than perhaps legally. (I'd also point out that every large-scale analogue to this in human history has failed rather catastrophically).
There are numerous proposals laying around
Well, sure, but I meant in the actual argument presented. LukeZaz argued that was the point and I missed it, but I disagree. Perhaps they were right.
Yes, you are correct here that philosophically they are most likely identical in all ways (I am not really able to argue this point), while there are some legal differences. I just think it's...
See, I would argue that philosophically and in practice they're identical and it's only legally that they're distinct.
Yes, you are correct here that philosophically they are most likely identical in all ways (I am not really able to argue this point), while there are some legal differences.
I just think it's important to acknowledge that there are many ways for humans to interact with the rest of earth and its inhabitants and the "owning" as it is used today by "western" capitalist thought is not the only way to use and share.
Although functionally it may look the same I think that intent, feelings around, outcome, etc matter.
Well, sure, but I meant in the actual argument presented. LukeZaz argued that was the point and I missed it, but I disagree. Perhaps they were right.
I took the comic and this comment section as an invitation to think and talk about resource management on a large scale (but I'm biased as that is one if my favourite subjects) and I think the point the writer/artist is trying to make (in the second to last panel) is that we need to be, in some sense, more pragmatic about how we think so that we don't forget the "real world" (something I'm terrible at, in some ways, but clearly in this way!)
I kind of agree with the comic but I also think it is important
It seems to me freedom is just too much of an abstract concept to build anything upon ; it's not a psychological state like pleasure and pain. Why is freedom good ? presumably because it feels...
It seems to me freedom is just too much of an abstract concept to build anything upon ; it's not a psychological state like pleasure and pain. Why is freedom good ? presumably because it feels good to be free and it feels bad to be constrained. We're back to pleasure and pain.
It's worth emphasizing that "freedom" in this context is referring to free markets. The idea as I see it is that this kind of "freedom" is good because it leads to positive outcomes for all...
It's worth emphasizing that "freedom" in this context is referring to free markets. The idea as I see it is that this kind of "freedom" is good because it leads to positive outcomes for all involved in some fashion or another; the appeal could come from raw, literal freedom ("My trading is restricted only by my means") or from a belief that it will result in some indirect positive like innovation. Or maybe some folks just see gigantic tax codes and want things to be simpler.
I don't really like any of that though.1 Free markets lead to wealth pooling in the hands of the few, and once that's happened, "my means" becomes one hell of a restriction, while innovation as a strategy gets outperformed by buying/sabotaging all your competitors.
1. Except the tax codes thing, but we don't need free markets to do that.
The bit about who "owns all the land" really did matter when most people were peasant farmers who barely made a living and were constrained by not having enough land (See here.) The abundance of...
The bit about who "owns all the land" really did matter when most people were peasant farmers who barely made a living and were constrained by not having enough land (See here.) The abundance of land for settlers farming in the US (putting them into conflict with Native Americans) was a very big deal.
Nowadays things seem rather different. Sustenance farming isn't a thing in the US or Europe. Farms are businesses. In the US, many rural areas have emptied out. Agricultural land in some places has gone back to forest. There are cities with abandoned buildings downtown because they're losing population.
So it's mostly not about who owns "all the land" anymore. It's about housing in desirable areas, and more can be created by building taller buildings. If it's allowed.
I don't agree. There are three wars going on at the moment that even I know about that have everything to do with land and natural resources: Israel's war against Palestine Russia's war against...
I don't agree.
There are three wars going on at the moment that even I know about that have everything to do with land and natural resources:
Israel's war against Palestine
Russia's war against Ukraine
USA's war against Iran
To say that these wars have nothing to do with land and control of natural resources is baffling to me.
[Edit:] Changed "on" to "against" in the third example too, as I think it's an important distinction (that I somehow failed to make in 1 out of 3 cases!)
But those wars are being fought by states, not private individuals. Skybrian was pretty clearly talking about land ownership in terms of people, not countries, no? He also never mentioned natural...
But those wars are being fought by states, not private individuals. Skybrian was pretty clearly talking about land ownership in terms of people, not countries, no? He also never mentioned natural resources at all... Or war, for that matter.
I think you're over-focusing on land when it was given as a prime example of property writ large, but even after that: Land is absolutely still important. I think you've forgotten that unused land...
I think you're over-focusing on land when it was given as a prime example of property writ large, but even after that: Land is absolutely still important. I think you've forgotten that unused land is still owned.
Shit, before I was a leftist, I liked Georgism,1 and this was it's whole thing. Turns out, land is three things: 1) A limited resource, 2) a kind of wealth, and 3) a very safe investment.
It's a limited resource since there's only so much Earth to exist on, so there's hardly any supply. Property is usually inherited, so that doesn't make up for much. And as for selling, well — unless you're willing to pay a pretty penny, you'll have a hard time. Land is unusually likely to go up in value, as any nearby local development makes it more appealing. Abandoned areas are the only thing left, and that's a small consolation given how that land is only available due to both poor quality and a poor future.
Put those together, and land can end up very expensive for no good reason at all. It becomes a huge vector by which wealth inequality occurs, as the most moneyed classes can buy it up on the cheap and hold for as long as it takes to make a profit, all while frequently doing nothing with it. This gets worse with housing, as not only do you have the problem of affording the land itself, but one of the best ways to make money off a house is to rent it rather than sell. This creates a strong incentive against anyone who isn't a landlord from ever owning their own home. Build all the houses you want, this problem will come right back.
And if you're stuck with a slumlord, well... that's an awful lot like having a Property Monster of your very own.
Previous generations were presumably happier living in rust belt cities though, which I think goes to show how subjective land value is and how much its value is not in the land itself, but its...
Abandoned areas are the only thing left, and that's a small consolation given how that land is only available due to both poor quality and a poor future.
Previous generations were presumably happier living in rust belt cities though, which I think goes to show how subjective land value is and how much its value is not in the land itself, but its surroundings, due to things like neighbors and available jobs.
A favorite of mine from Existential Comics. Most of the site's comics are comedy-oriented with philosophy as more of a framing device. But every now and then comes a comic that makes a point. This is one I found particularly convincing.
For convenience, and because it can be easy to miss, here's the author's elaboration on the point from below the comic
Honestly I kind of think that most arguments against utilitarianism are a bit silly. But it really depends on which utilitarianism you're talking about. The more concrete the philosophy is, the less it makes sense. I prefer to think of it more of a barometer to the effectiveness of ideals within the framework of a population. This is a particularly good example of a silly response. While freedom can lead to happiness, it is far from a guarantee of it. Neoliberal policies have sought to increase freedom but we can see as a result people are much less happy about their lives than they were before those policies began. On a smaller scale, we also know that having more options is actually negatively correlated with the satisfaction of making a choice.
I've never read Nozick's works so I can't represent anything he's said, but it sounds like he's a liberal philosopher. I used to believe in liberalism but it has a critical flaw in that it requires a strong government to regulate capitalism, and it seems that in any given liberal system capital will rise up to neuter government's ability to regulate it.
WARNING Derailing of topic ahead! Feel free to ignore and not engage :)
People keep saying this, but is it really true?
From my point of view neoliberal policies have sought to:
My points are:
(Disclaimer: I'm a classical European anarchist with a Marxist view on economy and Kropotkin's theory of mutual aid as a base.)
I agree with you. “Sought to” and “achieved” are two very different things! And frankly I doubt that the reason why those policies actually passed were because of philanthropic goals….
Ah! I see, I'm glad to hear that <3
(In my limited understanding of English "sought to" includes an intent. And in my opinion the intent was never there - regardless of the amount in the lipservice expense column.)
Although the point of the comic is most obviously about property rights, I also see it as being about scarcity in general. The world economy is running on trading things that one party has and another one wants, and some of the parties accumulate more things which gives them leverage over the rest. Then this keeps accumulating because of generational wealth which is usually property, but may also be money, social titles, family names (such as "Windsor"), etc.
In Star Trek (at least in the early "good" Star Trek), humans have more fulfilling lives because it is a post-scarcity society. There's not much reason for war or hunger because replicator machines exist and anyone can have one.
In fact, the highly respected documentarian James Burke had a 2023 episode of Connections 3 called The End of Scarcity, where he talks about a "nanofabricator" that's going to give everyone everything they want.
The thing that James Burke seems to have missed is that we are already living in a society that is partly post-scarcity, but there are still people who are starving because some other people are hoarding resources and using that to obtain even more. There's going to be artificial scarcity because that benefits the hoarders. So when these replicators are invented, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg will have them, but they'll be illegal for most people to have for some invented reason. In Star Trek, the post-scarcity utopia is mostly because the philosophy of humans changed enough (due partly to a huge world war) so most people do not have this wealth hoarding reflex.
So yes I think this is a pretty neat comic that helps us realize that the current world order isn't the best possible and is actually pretty darn unfair.
Thanks for sharing. I love these comics, but hadn't seen this one before.
I am extremely pro-property rights, by tildes standards, so keep that in mind as framing for the following commentary.
I don't think the property monster idea quite works. The thought experiment for the utility monster works because utilitarianism is genuinely trying to make universal claims about morals and ethics. The universal part is key, because if you can show that there are scenarios under which the philosophy fails, that calls its general applicability into question. By contrast, only the most unhinged sovereign citizen would take such an absolutist view on property rights that they would say that there should be no limitations ever, so constructing a similar hypothetical doesn't disprove the themes in the same way.
The author writes that we should wonder, then, why we accept smaller versions of this scenario. But I don't think that logically holds either. You could construct almost any scenario of something that's fine in moderation but becomes abhorrent when taken to an extreme. ("The government puts people in jail. What if they put everyone in jail? It'd be horrible. So why is it okay if some people are jailed?")
I think maybe the the biggest difference is that utilitarianism is theoretical but we actually have to deal with property in the real world. What I mean is that I think theoretical takedowns of philosophical precepts, with no alternatives, is fine because it's all thought experiments. But in the real world you've got to present an alternative. Okay, sure, people who own property could have power over those who don't. But somebody's got to own it, whether it be individuals or a board appointed by the state or whatever, so what's the actual proposal to make a system that's better?
The thing about the utility monster is that it was originally conceptualized by Robert Nozick, a man who believed in property rights so thoroughly that his philosophy considered the concept of selling yourself into slavery to be entirely just, provided you "freely" (free as in free market) made that deal. So yes, we are dealing with an extreme libertarian here.1
Yes. That's what the bottom-left panel of the comic is saying. Meanwhile, the author's question regarding real-world, smaller-scale versions of the property monster is posed because, unlike the thought experiment, that issue actually exists. "Logical extremes are unhelpful because they do not happen" doesn't work as an argument when the scenario starts actually happening.
Crucially though, one of the points of this comic is to make the case that endless theorizing to the point of absurdity is not a good use of time, so you're agreeing with it a lot more than you realize.
1. Nozick believed this less later in his life, and in a way, even acknowledged the concept of a "property monster" by admitting that his entitlement theory could lead to "inequalities" that he said "seemed unfair." This lead him finding inheritance taxes agreeable, if only to a degree.
I should've asked first what you find the comic convincing of. If it's that Nozick specifically was wrong, then okay we agree on everything. I agree he was an extreme libertarian whose absolutist philosophy can be challenged with the property monster. What did you find it particularly convincing of?
Late response, sorry, but I've been busy! I appreciate the question, though.
A couple things, really! When I first read it years back, I saw it as a convincing argument against free market ideologies. I still feel that it is, but at the time, I don't think I spent very long noticing the last couple panels. These days I have, and so I now find the argument against absurd thought experiments more compelling, though that may just be because it's a newer realization for me.
I think we already agree on the latter, as it's rather plainly more useful to compare arguments to the world in which we live than it is to compare them to the philoso-spherical cow, as it were.
For the former, it was a convincing way of laying bare some inequalities that I saw as inherent to free-market ideologies. After all, what use is applying the term "free" to a market if that freedom is 1) based on ignoring leverage imbalances, and 2) the erstwhile freedom is self-destructive, as each trade further worsens the issue of leverage? Sure, the Property Monster will never exist, but we've still got Elon Musk, don't we? Even if we restrict our thinking to the U.S., wealth inequality today is rampant, and that is at least in part due to the fact that free markets grant large companies better trades than the poor.
I have other critiques against free markets, of course, but – much like the question of what the solution is – they're out-of-scope here.
Not "could have", just "have". Obviously if you are sub-letting a room in Caracas and I want to live in Oslo you don't have power over me directly while indirectly we are ofc part of the same system.
Not really. Although "own", "control" and "decide how to use, if at all" can seem like exactly synonymous they are not. (We are talking philosophically here, in everyday life I could make the opposite point to make a point.)
There are numerous proposals laying around. Some proposals I like are:
See, I would argue that philosophically and in practice they're identical and it's only legally that they're distinct. One of your proposals suggested that all infrastructure should be controlled by a democratic institution, right? If that institution is controlling and apportioning all land, they "own" it in any real sense other than perhaps legally. (I'd also point out that every large-scale analogue to this in human history has failed rather catastrophically).
Well, sure, but I meant in the actual argument presented. LukeZaz argued that was the point and I missed it, but I disagree. Perhaps they were right.
Yes, you are correct here that philosophically they are most likely identical in all ways (I am not really able to argue this point), while there are some legal differences.
I just think it's important to acknowledge that there are many ways for humans to interact with the rest of earth and its inhabitants and the "owning" as it is used today by "western" capitalist thought is not the only way to use and share.
Although functionally it may look the same I think that intent, feelings around, outcome, etc matter.
I took the comic and this comment section as an invitation to think and talk about resource management on a large scale (but I'm biased as that is one if my favourite subjects) and I think the point the writer/artist is trying to make (in the second to last panel) is that we need to be, in some sense, more pragmatic about how we think so that we don't forget the "real world" (something I'm terrible at, in some ways, but clearly in this way!)
I kind of agree with the comic but I also think it is important
It seems to me freedom is just too much of an abstract concept to build anything upon ; it's not a psychological state like pleasure and pain. Why is freedom good ? presumably because it feels good to be free and it feels bad to be constrained. We're back to pleasure and pain.
It's worth emphasizing that "freedom" in this context is referring to free markets. The idea as I see it is that this kind of "freedom" is good because it leads to positive outcomes for all involved in some fashion or another; the appeal could come from raw, literal freedom ("My trading is restricted only by my means") or from a belief that it will result in some indirect positive like innovation. Or maybe some folks just see gigantic tax codes and want things to be simpler.
I don't really like any of that though.1 Free markets lead to wealth pooling in the hands of the few, and once that's happened, "my means" becomes one hell of a restriction, while innovation as a strategy gets outperformed by buying/sabotaging all your competitors.
1. Except the tax codes thing, but we don't need free markets to do that.
The bit about who "owns all the land" really did matter when most people were peasant farmers who barely made a living and were constrained by not having enough land (See here.) The abundance of land for settlers farming in the US (putting them into conflict with Native Americans) was a very big deal.
Nowadays things seem rather different. Sustenance farming isn't a thing in the US or Europe. Farms are businesses. In the US, many rural areas have emptied out. Agricultural land in some places has gone back to forest. There are cities with abandoned buildings downtown because they're losing population.
So it's mostly not about who owns "all the land" anymore. It's about housing in desirable areas, and more can be created by building taller buildings. If it's allowed.
I don't agree.
There are three wars going on at the moment that even I know about that have everything to do with land and natural resources:
To say that these wars have nothing to do with land and control of natural resources is baffling to me.
[Edit:] Changed "on" to "against" in the third example too, as I think it's an important distinction (that I somehow failed to make in 1 out of 3 cases!)
But those wars are being fought by states, not private individuals. Skybrian was pretty clearly talking about land ownership in terms of people, not countries, no? He also never mentioned natural resources at all... Or war, for that matter.
I think you're over-focusing on land when it was given as a prime example of property writ large, but even after that: Land is absolutely still important. I think you've forgotten that unused land is still owned.
Shit, before I was a leftist, I liked Georgism,1 and this was it's whole thing. Turns out, land is three things: 1) A limited resource, 2) a kind of wealth, and 3) a very safe investment.
It's a limited resource since there's only so much Earth to exist on, so there's hardly any supply. Property is usually inherited, so that doesn't make up for much. And as for selling, well — unless you're willing to pay a pretty penny, you'll have a hard time. Land is unusually likely to go up in value, as any nearby local development makes it more appealing. Abandoned areas are the only thing left, and that's a small consolation given how that land is only available due to both poor quality and a poor future.
Put those together, and land can end up very expensive for no good reason at all. It becomes a huge vector by which wealth inequality occurs, as the most moneyed classes can buy it up on the cheap and hold for as long as it takes to make a profit, all while frequently doing nothing with it. This gets worse with housing, as not only do you have the problem of affording the land itself, but one of the best ways to make money off a house is to rent it rather than sell. This creates a strong incentive against anyone who isn't a landlord from ever owning their own home. Build all the houses you want, this problem will come right back.
And if you're stuck with a slumlord, well... that's an awful lot like having a Property Monster of your very own.
1. Watch out folks, this one's a gateway drug!
Previous generations were presumably happier living in rust belt cities though, which I think goes to show how subjective land value is and how much its value is not in the land itself, but its surroundings, due to things like neighbors and available jobs.