Talk:Property

bundle of rights

1. control use of the property
2. benefit from the property (examples: mining rights and rent)
3. transfer or sell the property
4. exclude others from the property.

I think we are missing a few things here. What about the right to modify and destroy the property ('abusus' from the 'Roman Dominium' concept)? Making this distinction, we should then include the 'Germanic Patrimonium' concept of property as well as it does NOT contain the right to modify/destroy. As this right has links to sustainable use of resources, I think we should include it somehow. Unfortunately, I am not an expert and have not found a good source for reference on this except some slides from a lecture. Anyone who can help with this? Madmaxx 09:45, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

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And this counts as NPOV? user:sjc

What is the difference between Property (law) and Property law? Alex756

I think we should combine articles related to stuff about propety into one. There are a lot of overlaps now. -- Taku 02:33 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, there's actually a matrix of concerns. You have private individual ownership, private family or trust ownership, private union or co-op ownership, cultural or social ownership (like a commons), state or jurisdictional ownership, various contractual ways to share ownership and access, and the 'public domain' of what is 'not owned' at all. Against this you have to map the kinds of things that can be owned, of which the most critical are the kinds of capital which have implications for who owns the product or yields of the capital.

Such article if know are property, ownership, property law, real property. If merged article is too long, maybe we can have two articles: one about propety general or political side such as socialism and one about legal issues. -- Taku 02:33 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

A better way to state this is to say that there are systems of property rights that lean strongly towards the collective and assume that property rights can be re-assigned as required to suit the collective intelligence's perception (socialism) to gain efficiency, and others that argue that doing this causes a loss of faith in the integrity of property systems and demotivates improving any property whatsoever - accordingly, one must live with the degree of suffering caused by the occassional unavailability fo capital for its optimal use (this is the basis of capitalism). One can also state this as optimistic vs. pessimistic about human nature vs. social decision making, or as backwards vs. forward looking. Once the property rights are assigned, however, one can of course look at how they are protected and denied others with no reference to the political economy that assigned them or restricted them.

I'm not sure if I completely agree, definitely put property law and property together, it should be a general statement about property laws in varous jurisdictions civil law and common law with links to more specific divisions, and then some technical concepts (just a few, this area of law could quickly get out of control, I just drafted a The Rule in Shelley's Case but we don't want to have a whole book on future interests in a general encyclopedia). I think ownership is different than property and probably more philosophical than legal (or maybe it is part of the philosophy of law or jurisprudence; Real property is a definitely subdivision of commmon law property law in the common law, the other being personal property. There is too much information to bring this all together without destroying a lot of work already done. Alex756

I hope I have put this in the right place, Iam a fairly new Wikipedian!

I don't think the ownership page should be merged with property , since ownership is a relationship of which property is only one element. I am saying more in 'ownership' than one can say about the things which are owned. Indeed, many of the important points made here are about the relationships (helpful and otherwise) created between people who own, not at all about what is owned, ie property.

How is the new i book? I am an Apple fan as well!

Tony Clarke

Yes, ownership is about the relationship among properties. But it is also true that things become properties once they are owned by someone. I mean they are different things but they should be talked in the same context. In wikipedia, we want to discuss ideas, knowledge such as ownership or properties or some concrete entities such as persons. Maybe we can have an article called "ownership and property" in which we can talk about quite a general thing like what does it mean by ownning things or when people own or lose? To me, such a article seems more like encyclopedia while each ownership and propety article seems a little more than definitions found in dictionaries. If the article becomes too general or idea and history-centric, we can have a separate article for property law. What do you think? Remember we don't need an article corresponding to each English word. It's called a dictionary.

And yes, my new iBook, while there is a powerbook, is great!. I have been enjoying using Safari browser, particularly tabs are so convinient. Actually I am a so-called switcher who immigrated from Windows to mac world, but I can tell you I am not disappointed at all!

Anyway, I certain welcome any comments. Cheers!

-- Taku 23:39 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

This article is much more a general article about the idea of property and in ways it does a good job of drawing attention to how culturally variable it is. Regarding the law of property I must say that it is not just a bunch of definitions, one difficulty in understanding legal concepts is that they cannot just be understood by knowing what the words mean (check out The Rule in Shelley's Case for an example. It is the interrelationship of these ideas that build up a system of law, Anyway a legal dictionary such as Black's Law Dictionary has almost 25,000 terms on approximately 1700 pages (Deluxe 7th edition), what is here (generally speaking) are relatively general overviews of various areas of law and some in-depth discussion topics that deal with historical stuff, social aspects of how the law differs in various places and legal institutions, not really stuff for a dictionary. Alex756 01:35 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

I am sorry but I really didn't mean to argue again this current article, which is written well and I have no intention to destroy them. My point is I mean why I said this is a little more than entries in dictionaries is because this article is basically explain what is a property, how defined in laws, trementent of property in culture and a little beyond it. This is why it seems strange if we combine ownership to property because they are in nature different concepts. But we want not just define stuff but write a prose. For example, we need to discuss stuff for example, when properties are acquired, destroyed, or defended. Can territories of the state be a property? What is the ownership of the Earth? If resources can be copied limitlessly, what is that mean by the ownership or property. These stuff don't fit neither here or to ownership article because both property and ownership articles talk about what is a property, what is an ownership and basically that is all. Maybe saying an entry in dictionary is a midconception because surely this article is not a mere definition. We can spend many words only about what is it but in my opinion an article in encyclopedia can be beyond about what is it and it should be. For example, see subprogram an article I wrote recently. The article seems still stuby but I think it is what we want to have here. Or I am trying to add more about how Japanese language affects to Japanese and their cultures in Japanese language. Those are not about what is a Japanese language for sure. Besides, as we know the article is definitely inclined to that in laws. While property is a legal term I think, we don't have to limit discussion about it.

Actually this is my recent complain about wikipedia though. (If you observe me, I have been mering) and posssibly my incline can be not that of a majority in here. Or maybe simply I didn't understand well topics property and ownership. I hope you don't mind if I misunderstood the matter completely. -- Taku 03:57 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

I welcome your comments Taku, and it was interesting for me to think how ownership and property are different. Property is something physical and real in the world, to which some laws apply: ownership is a relationship between people and things, and sometimes affects relationships between people in a harmful way, e.g the difference between the developed and the develo9ping worldis a difference of wealth, ie the amount of ownership the societies have. And there are also huge gaps in the quality of life between these societies. This difference comes down tohard realities such as child povety,illness, suffering, short life spans.. I think all of these are somehow related to wownership, since it can allow us to legitimately exclude people, our neighbour next door, or our neighbour on the other side of the globe. But I know that a world order structured on ownership, or on anything else for that matter, cannot be changed safely except in a very slow way.

Hope you don't mind me thinking out loud, and as you can see my thinking isn't clear enough sometimes. Best wishes

TonyClarke 09:53 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

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A starting point to fix this up would be to designate corporate and land ownership and state (and commons) and instruction ownership as necessarily collective. Land and instruction, unlike devices or infrastructure, are guaranteed to outlast any one person's life so they are at least inheritable - and is often collectively owned via trusts, rights of way, etc. Corporations are usually held at least 49% by someone other than the CEO, very often 51%.

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This section has a major NPOV problem, but I do not feel qualified to fix it:

It is commonly but incorrectly believed that some cultures, for example native Americans had no concept of property. This mistaken belief comes from the fact that some commodities which are considered economically important in one society are not valuable in others. Thus ownership of land is important for agricultural societies but not in hunter-gatherer societies.

Just from a logical standpoint: The notion of property is not innate, that is, it evolved as human society evolved. There was a time in human history when property did not exist, therefore there ARE cultures without this concept: our own. Also, the idea that certain natural resources are "important" or "valuable" is NOT the same thing as property, which denotes owners, exclusion, contracts (for transferring ownership) and positive law to describe these rights. A culture can feel that their food and water sources are "important", but still have a notion of a common right to possess and use these resources communally, with no creature having a greater right to use than another.

Bhuston 16:16, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Animals seem to innately mark their territory

The best thing to do is state that property refers specifically to the present set of legal arrangements based on possession and title, and have a reference to other systems of ownership. This can include medieval and roman law, native american systems or anything else people feel is interesting, but which are not, properly speaking property.

This would be useful because many of these systems have an impact on the present system of corporate and property law, but are would not be considered "good law". The transition between older property conceptions based on feudal arrangements and the modern system is relevant, partially because it is still going on in a large fraction of the developing world.

Stirling Newberry 05:30, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

We also need to clean up the difference between "property" and "private property", which this article is, well, somewhat unclear on. Stirling Newberry 05:32, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Knot, Gordian, like that. Just wrote a section, rather bad one, on anthropological study of property systems. Needs a better one, but the original section was just a rant that needed at least some improvment.

Stirling Newberry 06:45, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps we should have something on the philosophical justifacation for property the only thing i found relating to it was the quote "From this evolved the modern conception of property as a right which is enforced by positive law, in the expecation that this would produce more wealth and better standards of living."

JeffBobFrank 03:05, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This seems wrong. That may be the post-hoc justification but the more likely explanation for the growth of property law is the wish of property-owners to protect their property without having to use a big stick.

Exile

Not so Tiny Disagreement?

There seems to be a tiny disagreement between Christofurio and myself regarding a certain sentence. Christofurio wrote:

[...] and that property rights are akin to the household goods that a father may dole out among his kids -- his to take back or redistribute according to his pleasure.

And I replaced it with:

[...] and that property is akin to the household goods that a father may dole out among his kids -- his to take back, keep to himself or give to his favorite subjects according to his pleasure.

Why the change? Well, first of all, you can't redistribute property rights. You can only redistribute actual property. Second of all, the term "redistribution" itself looks to me like a sneaky attempt at introducing POV by trying to put all enemies of capitalism in the same boat - as advocates of laissez-faire are so keen to do whenever they get the opportunity. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but it doesn't hurt to replace the term with an equivalent phrase, does it?

Reply: The passage in question is discussing Filmer, and it seems to me that Filmer would indeed say that the sovereign can redistribute property rights. I don't have a pertinent quotation handy, but in the absense of quotations on point from you, I don't feel obligated. On Filmer's patriachialist view, the Big Daddy says, "here son M, have a toy horse" and "here, son N, have a teddy bear." Now, what does it mean to say that Big Daddy (and his toady, Filmer) is of the opinion that N has a right to that Teddy bear? It means that BD expects and hopes that M will stay away from the Teddy bear in the absense of N's permission, and that BD expects and hopes that if M violates this principle, N will be willing to tussle over it. BD can later change the allocation of horse and bear (and the rights that go with that allocation) but it is meaningful as a distribution of rights (not just of toys) until that time.

As to the word "redistribute" itself: it means "to distribute again." That is precisely its vernacular significance and what it meant in my use of it. It isn't one of my sneaky POV anarcho-capitalist plots. But since I'm so easy to get along with, I will abandon the use of "redistribute" if you will leave the phrase "property rights" unmolested.

I suffer from my own POV paranoia in this matter, after all. I believe that you are systematically removing the phrase "property rights" not just because you don't believe Filmer could have meant such a thing, but because you don't believe there are such things as property rights. Your efforts to explain why have been utterly illogical, going off on some tangent about "self-ownership" as you have. (Memo: My relation to my self isn't ownership -- it's identity.) My own POV is that the right to own and contractually transfer property is a human right, indistinguishable in principle from such other human rights as worship or free expression. But regardless of all that, 'property rights' is a fair phrase for what Filmer was saying, and I'll keep putting it in as long as you keep trying to take it out. You've had your way on "redistribution" -- that should leave you self-identically content. --Christofurio 13:14, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

Property is about rights and obligations between people with regard to things

This review is missing one of the most prominant views of property for the past century. Jurists, anthropologists, and others have spent many decades now speaking about property not as a thing, or as a relationship between people with regard to things, but as a set of jural relationships between people with regard to things. This entry should recognize this.

I am willing to put this in.

Any comments?

Pro/Anti Property

I think pro and anti property sections need to be reconsidered. Maybe the terms "pro property" and "anti property" should be changed to "pro private property" and "anti private property" to avoid the contridiction of communism appearing in both sections. Also, "Ownership society" seems more like a political slogan used to promote capitalism rather than a separate idea.

Property - Logic/philosophy/ontology

Property and quality

Quality is the substance that makes an object/entity what it is. A quality is inherent, a property is relative. A quality is typical of the whole, a property is typical of a part.

Property is relative. Quality is absolute. An object can survive without some properties, but not without its quality.

A property is comon in all members of a class. Properties are of two kinds. Group 1 property shows the limits (contains constraints). If they disappear, the object itself disappears.

They are substantial (not substance) properties. The constraints here are not the same as the specifics of an object, though.

Group 2 properties are simple properties. They do not delimit objects. It is the quality that makes a difference among objects.

The number of qualities of an object is endless.

A particular quality may be the property of different objects, and vice versa.

A quality itself is a propetry, it is relative as any other property, i.e. it does not depend on the object that it is a quality of, but on other objects associated with that object.

Or: what is a quality for one object is a property only for another. (Example: an ability to do something – with an amateur and a professional).

A quality is not complete specifics. Therefore we have a separate sense for it (quality). If two substantial properties make up a quality, then combined, they are again a substantial property. The complete set of qualities is what you call the specifics.

Apogr 20:16, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

see also "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Substance_theory"

This page was last modified 20:36, 9 Jun 2005. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details).

uses of the term

"The concept of property or ownership has no single or universally accepted definition. Like other foundational concepts which have great weight in public discourse, popular usage varies broadly." It's pathetic for an encyclopedia article to start out wishy-washy like that. Other encyclopedias have no problem taking a stand and defining it at the outset. RJII 03:16, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Confusion

A lot of material in the article (e.g. English philosophers) seems to relate more to the justification for the state rather that property as such. I recognise that these topics are connected but they are not the same. As well as this, there is a difference between legal, moral, and social views of property which are muddled in the article.--Jack Upland 00:47, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

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I agree, a text book definition I like is

"You have property rights when you own or have exclusive rights to use some asset such as a good or service. Others must compensate you if they wish to use your property. For example, you may have property rights over a car, but no clearly defigned property rights to a particular area of the highway belongs to you alone. You share the highway with others".

- pg 87, Moden Industrial Organizations, Dennis W. Carlton, Jeffrey M. Perloff

Property in Philosophy

I intend to enlarge the philosophy section to include a sub-section Socialist Critique and Replies, with sections on Charles Comte, Pierre Proudhon, Frederic Bastiat, and Herbert Spencer. Also, Murray Rothbard needs to be in the Contemporary section. You are invited to assist. Hogeye 06:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

• The contemporary philosophy subsection is severely lacking. What about Nozick, Rawls, Waldron, Schmidtz? Contemporary debates on this issue focus greatly on their idea.
  • I would humbly suggest to cut a separate Philosophy of property article. This one is already huge. mikka (t) 23:37, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

M&Ms: While we are talking contemporary, you might aswell include De Soto "The Mystery Of Capital" (2000). In his book De Soto constructs an arguement for the benefits of making property into "private" property and also how private property naturally arises to promoted economic stability.

Land ownership

Land ownership redirects here. This is a special kind of "ownership right" and must be separated into its own article. At the moment this article is a Caesar salad and basically useless for an uneducated person.

I understand that this is a complex socio-economic issue and apologize for my uneducated opinion about the article. I came here with a very special problem: I noticed that landowner redirects to landlord, which is totally wrong. I started looking for a better target and found land ownership, which points here. But if I redirect landowner here (i.e., to Property (ownership right)), a possible reader will probably be bewildered (as I was).

So please, please make me at least a small stub Land ownership. mikka (t) 23:37, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Inheritance

I find it weird that Inheritance isn't mentioned in this article since it's a major form of property which at the same time can't be defended by the "I worked for my money" argument.

M&Ms: Though not explicitly mentioned "inheritance" comes under the right to transfer or sell property - one of the use rights in the bundle. 26/04/06.